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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE PENTATEUCH 



VINDICATED 



THE ASPERSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO, 



BY 

WILLIAM HENRY GREEN, 

PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PRINCETON, N. J. 



" If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they bo persuaded though 
one rose from the dead.'' — Luke xvi. 31. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN WILEY, 56 WALKER STREET. 

1863. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S63, bf 

WILLIAM H. GEEEX, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Conrt of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



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1 



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PREFACE. 



The aim of this Treatise is precisely what its title imports. 
It does not pretend to be an exhibition of the grounds on 
which the faith of Christendom reposes in adhering to the 
historical truth, the Mosaic Authorship and the inspiration 
of the Pentateuch ; nor is it designed to afford a com- 
plete refutation of the objections of all opposers. It 
occupies itself exclusively with the recent extraordinary 
publication of Bishop Colenso, containing an examination 
of his arguments seriatim with proofs of their inconclusive- 
ness and of the indubitable verity of the statements which 
he impugns. 

If the book reviewed in these pages had come from the 
hands of a professed infidel, it would probably have 
attracted no attention whatever. The notoriety, which it 
has gained, is due not to any novelty in its arguments, or 
speciousness in its objections, nor to any special merit in 
the mode of their presentation, but solely to the fact that 
a Bishop belonging to one of the leading churches of 



IV PREFACE. 

evangelical Christendom has undertaken to destroy the 
faith which once he preached. This joined with his loud 
professions of candour and disinterested love for the truth, 
his repeated insinuations of the insincerity of those with 
whom he was once associated, and the triumphant air 
which he assumes, as if confident of an easy victory, has 
given to it for the moment a factitious importance. 

For scholars no refutation is needed; what is here 
written, has been prepared with the view of guarding the 
unwary from being imposed upon by bold assertions and 
baseless assumptions, and of affording those who have not 
the leisure for a more extended examination of the subject, 
the evidence that though the faith of some may be over- 
thrown, nevertheless the Foundation of God Standeth 
Sure. 

If the author's life is spared, he hopes to be able at some 
future day to prepare a more extended work upon the 
criticism of the Pentateuch, and perhaps upon that of the 
Old Testament generally. 

The titles of the chapters are adopted from Bishop 
Colenso and contain his objections in the order in which 
they are stated by himself. The references to his book are 
throughout to the American Edition, issued by the Apple- 
tons. 

PrdhCETON. February, 1863. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

Preliminary Kemarks ..... 9 

I. — The Family or Judah 30 

II. — The Size of the Court of the Tabernacle, com- 
pared with the Number of the Congregation . 47 
III.-— Moses and Joshua addressing all Israel . . 52 
IV. — The Extent of the Camp, compared with the 
Priest's Duties and the Daily Necessities of 

the People 55 

V„ — The Number of the People at the First Muster 

COMPARED WITH THE POLL-TAX RAISED SIX MONTHS 
PREVIOUSLY 62 

VI. — The Israelites Dwelling in Tents ... 69 

VII. — The Israelites Armed 74 

VIII. — The Institution of the Passover ... 80 

IX. — The March out of Egypt 83 

X. — The Sheep and Cattle of the Israelites in the 

Desert ■, 86 

XI. — The Number of the Israelites compared with 

the Extent of the Land of Canaan . . 102 



CHAP. PAG* 

All. — The Number of the First-borss compared with 

tzz Xtmbeb or Mate Adults .... 110 
XTTT. — The SojouRircfG or the Israelites r>* Egtpt . 117 
XIT. — The Exodus t5 the Fourth Gexeratiox . . 1:5 
XT. — The Number or Israelites at the Time or the 

BzaNn 141 

XVI. — Tee Dashes jjtd Lettte3 at the Time or the 

Smm 156 

XYH, — The Number or Priests at the Exodus, compared 
with their Duties, axd with the Protisiok v 
j:?. :z:v ........ 163 

XVHL — The Priests A5D their Duties at tttt. Celebratmbi 

:j tzz ?a;5:~z7. 174 

XTX. — Tee Wap. o>" Midias . . . . . . 1" ; 

C:y:L73os ....... 193 



PKELIMISTARY EEMAEKS. 

Men's treatment of testimony is largely influenced by 
the prepossessions with which they approach it. The 
evidence of a witness, whom we know to be of excellent 
character and upon whose truthfulness we have every 
reason to rely, will command our respect and confidence. 
If there are obscurities in some of his statements, and 
even apparent inconsistencies between them, it might 
answer the purposes of an opposing counsel to magnify 
these to the greatest possible extent, to scout every 
method of solution that is suggested, however naturally 
it may offer itself, and to represent the difficulties in 
question as manifest and hopeless contradictions, which 
utterly discredit the witness. But an impartial judge or 
jury will be disposed to examine the matter patiently, 
knowing that nothing is of easier or more frequent 
occurrence than seeming and superficial discrepancies, 
when the facts are imperfectly known, and which would 
be at once removed if some missing links could be sup- 
plied. As long as any rational hypothesis suggests itself, 
therefore, by which the various statements can be har- 
monized, the credibility of the witness is not impugned ; 
and even if some things should remain unexplained, 
his general truthfulness and fidelity will enable us to 
credit them. 

1* 



10 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

In fact, no statement is ever made, and no narrative 
ever related without leaviDg much to be supplied men- 
tally by the hearer or reader. Everything can be con- 
verted into an absurdity, if no allowances are to be 
made, nothing to be admitted which is not in the letter 
of the narrative, however clearly it may imply it. Such 
a plain, every-day statement, as that "the Prince of 
Wales visited America," involves much which is not 
stated, which is left to the presumed intelligence of every 
one to supply. Suppose it should be made a serious 
objection that the ocean lay between America and Bri- 
tain, presenting an insuperable barrier to his crossing; or 
that the distance is so great that even if the ocean were 
not there, no prince would ever have consented to such a 
pilgrimage. And if the objector had an arithmetical turn, 
he might amuse us by drawn out calculations as to how 
far a man can swim without exhaustion, how many days 
this prince must have been buffeting the waves before 
he reached America ; how many pounds of provisions 
he must have carried on his back to support him during 
this long period, and how many furlongs he must have 
been in height to have rested on the bottom in mid-ocean 
when exhausted. 

If, in the midst of this tirade, any one should mildly 
suggest that, after all, the statement is credible, if we 
only assume that he came over in a vessel, such a result 
might be scouted as a "pure assumption, unwarranted 
by anything that is found in the statement under exa- 
mination" (Colenso, p. 144), and only showing how " men 
will do violence to the plain reading of it in order to 
evade a difficulty " (p. 64). " The story says nothing 
about this vessel," " as surely it must have done " if one 
was really employed (p. 101). It is "a plain evasion of 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 11 

the distinct meaning, only resorted to in order to escape 
from a position of extreme difficulty, to suggest " such a 
thing (p. 125). On the other hand, it might be added, 
the author of the story does not seem to have had a sus- 
picion that there was an ocean there, or that a vessel 
would be required. It involves, consequently, so many 
impossibilities and absurdities, and such manifest igno- 
rance on the part of its author, that " I do not hesitate 
to declare this statement to be utterly incredible and 
impossible " (p. 114). We might be obliged to leave the 
objector undisturbed in his incredulity, though our faith 
in his sanity would not be increased, nor would our 
faith in the prince's visit to this continent be seriously 
shaken. 

Now, we have no idea that anything which we, or any 
one else, can say in reply to the like objections which 
Bishop Colenso has brought against the Pentateuch will 
alter the state of his mind, or that of others like-minded 
with him. The difficulty is in the whole attitude which 
he occupies. He has picked out a few superficial diffi- 
culties in the sacred record, not now adduced for the first 
time, nor first discovered by himself. They seem, how- 
ever, to have recently dawned upon his view. He was 
aware, long before, of certain difficulties in the scriptural 
account of the creation and deluge ; and instead of satis- 
factorily and thoroughly investigating these, he was con- 
tent, he tells us, to push them off, or thrust them aside, 
satisfying himself with the moral lessons, and trusting 
vaguely, and, as he owns, not very honestly (p. 47), that 
there was some way of explaining them (pp. 4, 6). The 
other difficulties, which have since oppressed him, he then 
had no notion of; in fact, so late as the time when he 
published or prepared his Commentary on the Eomans 



12 PRELIMINARY REMARK8. 

(p. 215) he had no idea of ever holding his present 
views. As there is nothing brought out in his book 
which unbelievers have not flaunted and believing expo- 
sitors set themselves to explain long since, we are left to 
suppose that his theological training as a minister and a 
bishop, and his preparation as a commentator, could not 
have been very exact or thorough. If the Pentateuch 
is the book of absurdities he asserts, and these are so 
palpable as he asserts, and yet he never saw it or ima- 
gined it until now, his wits must have been recently 
sharpened, or his acquaintance with the book of which 
he was a professed teacher and expounder must have 
been limited indeed. 

His mission to the Zulus, however, fortunately or 
unfortunately as the case may be, broke the spell. He 
went out to teach the Zulus Christianity, and now, at 
length, he is obliged to study the bible on which that 
religion is based. The result is the astounding discovery 
that the Pentateuch and Joshua are utterly " unhistori- 
cal." They are, in fact, if he is to be credited, the most 
stupendous fabrications and the silliest fabrications which 
ever were put together. How it will fare with the rest 
of the Bible, when he comes to apply his arithmetic to 
it, we cannot say. But he has threatened to carry his 
work of devastation into the New Testament (p. 29), and 
we are probably to be some day made to stare by seeing 
this too vanish before our eyes, the baseless fabric of a 
vision. Whether even Eomans will be spared, upon 
which he has already commented in a different state of 
mind, and which he now commends to those who want 
something " to fill up the aching void " created by this 
sudden and hopeless demolition of the Pentateuch (pp. 
214, 215), remains to be seen. 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 13 

Bishop Colenso expects great results from the publica- 
tion of these discoveries, for he still seems to fancy them 
such. His eyes have just been opened, and he expects 
all the world to stand agape as he has done, and to expe- 
rience the same revolution in sentiment. The British 
church, at least, he is very solicitous to win over. He 
does not see why he must give up his lordly honours and 
his comfortable bishopric, (p. 34,) for denouncing Moses, 
and railing at the Son of God. He does not see why the 
church should not be so enlarged as to include every 
unbeliever in the realm, (p. 36,) who thinks with him that 
the Bible is at least as good as the Yedas, and that it 
contains everything necessary for salvation, (p. 34,) see- 
ing there is nothing to be saved from. If this is not the 
case, in five years no honest and ingenuous youth will 
enter its ministry, (p. 37.) So thoroughly have the foun- 
dations of Moses and the prophets been shaken by this 
new assault. So great is the danger, which the race of 
bigots who still superstition sly and uncandidly cling to 
the truth of the books of Moses, are preparing for them- 
selves and the church to which they belong. 

We must beg leave to request the Bishop to be calm. 
The foundations of earth and heaven are not yet under- 
mined. The Pentateuch has borne assaults before un- 
scathed, and it will not be damaged by his, even if he is 
a missionary bishop ; nor by the " Essays and Ke views" 
which he holds in such esteem. Colenso is not the first 
arithmetician who has fancied that he had squared the 
circle ; nor is he the first who has been mistaken in his 
fancy. 

"We shall not dispute the truth of the account, which 
the Bishop gives us, of the way in which he reached his 
present convictions, nor the sincerity with which he 



14: 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 



holds them. It is quite likely that he arrived at them 
reluctantly, and wrote a long letter, which he never 
sent, to a professional friend to aid him in getting rid of 
his doubts and solving his difficulties. And that since 
then he procured copies of Hengstenberg, Havernick, and 
Kurtz, of whose writings he seems to have had no know- 
ledge before, but which he obligingly informs his 
readers, among the rest of his disclosures, (p. 75,) " may 
be found in an English translation in Clark's Theological 
Library, easily accessible to any one." Their answer to 
his difficulties failed to satisfy him. Though he has 
spent " less than two years" (p. 12) in examining the sub- 
ject he is unchangeably convinced that the books of the 
Pentateuch are 'unhistorical,' that Moses never wrote 
them, nor were they written by any one in the Mosaic age. 

He will tell us in his next volume, i.e. we may sup- 
pose, when his studies are further advanced, and he has 
had time to digest or swallow some of the multitudinous 
German conceits on the subject — "the manner and the age 
or ages in which they have been composed" (p. 214). The 
assertion of the unhistorical character of the Exodus 
sweeps away much of the succeeding history, but Co- 
lenso has made up his mind to the consequences, and 
looks calmly on the ruin he has made. 

We would think better of his honesty, if the publica- 
tion of this book had been preceded by a manly resigna- 
tion of his bishopric, seeing he can no longer fulfil the 
vows made in the assumption of the office. If the 
Church of England is then so far gone as to reinvest him 
with it in his sense of it, with his understanding of the 
Scriptures, and after he has made this frank avowal of 
his belief, or rather his unbelief, he will not at least have 
obtained or held the position by false pretences. 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 15 

With, the best disposition to deal fairly and truly with 
him, we cannot allow the fairness and candour of his 
arguments. He has again and again withheld data 
necessary to a solution of difficulties which he is magni- 
fying, though he adduces these very same data in some 
other connection to create a fresh contradiction, showing 
thereby that it is not innocently or ignorantly done. 
More than one case of this special pleading, showing a 
determination at all hazards to make out a case, will 
come to light before we have done with the book. His 
sweeping ad captandum assertions of the unfairness and 
mental reservations, which he everywhere ascribes to the 
defenders of the common faith of Christendom, do not 
sound well beside his flings at Hengstenberg for "a 
sweeping charge of dishonest concealment of the truth," 
(p. 69,) and that in a case where it is pretty bard not to 
believe it true. 

However, all this has little to do with the case. The 
personal character of the Bishop is of small concern to us 
or our readers. Even as to the fairness or unfairness of 
his mode of arguing, he may be allowed to suit himself. 
All that we care about is the weight and validity of the 
arguments themselves. This we shall proceed to ex- 
amine. 

The Bishop proposes by arithmetic to overthrow the 
Mosaic record. Where antiquities, philology, astronomy, 
geology, and ethnology have failed, let us see what 
arithmetic can do. It is said that figures cannot lie, and 
yet nothing is more wofully deceptive than figures in the 
hand of an uncandid or unskilful man. The first requi- 
site in order to accurate results, is to see that all the ele- 
ments of the problem are present before attempting its 
solution. But this is prevented at the very start by the 



16 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

Bishop peremptorily forbidding the admission of any 
thing not explicitly stated in the text, however naturally 
to be presumed, however necessary to the right under- 
standing of the statements made. Any assumption re- 
quired by the consistency of the narrative, or involved 
in its truth and correctness, is instantly ruled out. To 
suggest it, is to make a desperate shift to save the credit 
of an absurd and self-contradictory story. And the fact 
that such a natural and necessary assumption would har- 
monize everything, instead of leaving the veracity of the 
narrative unimpeached as most men would judge, but 
makes it in the Bishop's eyes worse for the author. His 
not mentioning it, however plainly his narrative implies 
and requires it, is proof positive not only that it did not 
take place, but he did not see how essential it is to the 
consistency of what he relates, and how impossible his 
story is without it. If anybody says that the Prince of 
Wales came to America, and does not at the same time 
expressly add, that he crossed the ocean in a vessel, his 
story is absurdly false, according to the bishop, and the 
narrator a dolt. 

The Bishop, it has just been said, rules out assumptions 
not in so many words found in the text. But he does not 
always do this. We are in danger of doing him injustice. 
He is sometimes awake to the consciousness that words 
imply more than they express, and appeal to the good 
sense and imagination of the interpreter or hearer. He 
accordingly makes up for his refusal to allow what is not 
written in the text in explicit terms in certain cases, by 
the readiness with which he admits such assumptions in 
others. There is only this remarkable singularity in his 
demeanor. If any assumption reconciles difficulties and 
shows the narrative of Moses to be truthful and self-con- 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 17 

sistent it is inadmissible ; that is a perversion of the plain 
meaning of the text ; that is something of which there is 
no intimation in the story ; it is a disingenuous insertion 
by theologians intent on saving Moses' credit by fair means 
or the reverse. But if an assumption dexterously made 
can aggravate a difficulty or create the appearance of a 
contradiction, he has less hesitation about it. As for 
example, when it suits him to assume (p. 108) that the 
borrowing of the Israelites was done at a moments notice 
after they had been suddenly summoned to depart ; that (p. 
176) Jacob's sons brought up each time sufficient corn from 
Egypt for a year's consumption ; that (p. 195) the priests 
must have been charged with slaying the passover and 
sprinkling the blood, on which the whole apparent force 
of his argument and ridicule rests, when (on p. 202) he 
confesses that " it is certainly true that the references to 
the passover in the books of Exodus and Numbers do 
not appear to imply in any way that the priests were 
called into action in the celebration of this feast," etc., 
etc. 

Another element essential to the integrity of the prob- 
lems he sets himself to solve, but which Colenso quietly 
ignores, is the general character and authority of the 
Mosaic record. He throws in his pennyweight, and points 
triumphantly to the opposing scale as it kicks the beam. 
But it is because he has forgotten to put in the massive 
weights which belong there. He shows us the difficulties 
on one side, as he conceives them or creates them, and 
leaves the impression that there are no difficulties on the 
other side whatever. Here, he tells us, are these absurd 
and self-contradictory stories. Explode them, and every 
difficulty will vanish. He is ready with his conclusion at 
every fancied inconsistency : the sacred record is an 



18 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

absurd story — the Pentateuch is unhistorical — Moses 
never wrote it. 

But apart from the inspiration of the first five books 
of the Bible, the evidence of their authenticity and Mosaic 
authorship cannot be set aside by a stroke of the pen. 
There is such an accumulation of proof from such various 
sources, that the conviction which it produces is irresisti- 
ble. A man might as well try to unsettle the faith of 
the English people in the genuineness of Magna Charta 
or prove a volume of the Acts of Parliament to be ficti- 
tious. A volume, which lies at the basis of a nation's 
constitution and history, as the Pentateuch does, can 
never be shaken until the foundations of human know- 
ledge are overturned. 

And then it has evidence of an irrefragable kind pecu- 
liar to it as a product of inspiration. The works of God 
evidence themselves to be such by the divine stamp 
impressed upon them. And the word of God in all its 
parts reveals its divine character and authority. Whence 
came the religion of the Pentateuch, with the sublimity 
of its doctrines and the heavenly purity of its precepts ? 
Contrast it with the religion of Egypt, from which Israel 
had just come out, and with that of Canaan to which 
they were going. Contrast it with the religion of the 
most polished and enlightened nations of antiquity, and 
it is like life from the dead. Whence came its predic- 
tions which have been fulfilled or are fulfilling ? Whence 
came that minute system of typical representation point- 
ing forward to the distant future, every particular of 
which was so strangely matched by its counterpart fifteen 
centuries later ? Any man who will look at the corres- 
pondences between the Mosaic institutions and the Gospel 
of Christ, in their exactness and their multitude, must 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 19 

feel a sentiment of awe coming over him. The shadows 
of the incarnate Saviour which are projected in fact 
along the whole history of the chosen seed must make 
him, who sees them, exclaim, This is the finger of God. 
The man who holds in his hands the chart of an eclipse, 
and notes from his own observation of its occurrence the 
exactness of its correspondence with the celestial pheno- 
menon, could never be made to believe that its lines were 
drawn haphazard by an ignorant boor. Nor can he, who 
has compared the ritual of Moses with the great High 
Priest of our profession and the Sacrifice for human sin, 
believe that the former was the work of an unaided 
man. 

And when the Son of God explicitly says, John v. 46, 
"Moses wrote of me," all who have any reverence and 
love for this heavenly Teacher, will undoubtingly receive 
his testimony. The utter want of confidence in Jesus 
and reverence for his words, which Colenso displays (pp. 
30-32), is among the most painful things in his book. 
When a man gives up his faith in the authority and infal- 
libility of Christ's instructions, and would not expect him 
" to speak about the Pentateuch in other terms, than any 
other devout Jew of that day would have employed," 
what is there left of his Christianity which is worth 
retaining ? And yet is it not a legitimate sequence from 
his rejection of the mediator of the old covenant, that he 
should reject likewise the mediator of the new ? And is 
it not a fresh fulfilment of our Lord's declaration (John 
v. 47), "If ye believe not Moses' writings, how shall ye 
believe my words ?" 

Now we would not give up the word of Caesar, or Taci- 
tus, or Thucydides for such a show of argument as 
Colenso adduces. Much less would we give up that of 



20 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

Moses, whose writings are better attested, whose state- 
ments are more abundantly confirmed, and whose author- 
ity is more sacred. Our view of the case is sufficiently 
expressed in a sentiment which Colenso quotes (p. 16) 
from a friend with approbation, but which contains the 
severest possible satire upon his own book : "It should 
be remembered always that in forming an estimate of 
ancient documents, of the early Scriptures especially, we 
are doing that, which is like examining judicially the 
case of one who is absent, and unable to give his account 
of the matter. We should be very scrupulous about 
assuming that it is impossible to explain satisfactorily 
this or that apparent inconsistency, contradiction, or other 
anomaly, and charging him with dishonesty of purpose, 
considering that ours is an ex 'parte statement and inca- 
pable of being submitted to the party against whom it is 
made." 

It is not so easy a thing, therefore, to shake off the 
authority of the Pentateuch as Colenso seems to have 
imagined. It will require more than these petty diffi- 
culties at which he carps, and more than all unbelieving 
critics combined have ever yet raked together to over- 
turn it. Suppose that he has found something which 
we cannot explain or reconcile, shall we, therefore, fly in 
the face of the most formidable and inevitable difficulties ? 
If he even succeeds in discovering some mistake, some 
inaccuracy of numbers (which, however, he has not, as 
we shall show hereafter), will it mend the matter to sub- 
vert the most certain of all history ? Perhaps some day, 
upon the ground of the discrepancies in the army of 
the Potomac, which it seems the President and Gren. 
McClellan cannot settle within 35,000, some adventurous 
arithmetician will deny the fact of the American rebel- 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 21 

lion. It might be done with as much sense and pro- 
priety as what the Bishop has undertaken in the book 
before us. 

The Zulu Bishop has also forgotten one thing of which 
his English common sense should have reminded him, 
that an argument which proves too much proves nothing. 
He sets out to prove the Pentateuch non-Mosaic and 
unhistorical. Unfortunately, his argument goes far 
beyond the exigencies of this demand. It proves the 
narrative so absurdly inconsistent that no person of ordi- 
nary intelligence could have written it with any idea that 
it would ever be believed. It must have been conceived 
and executed in the vein of Munchausen. Especially if 
it were a forgery professing to be the work of Moses 
when it was not, it would have been more dexterously 
pieced and less clumsily put together. It is only simple, 
straightforward, unsuspecting narrators of truth who 
relate so inartificially and leave things unexplained for 
cavillers to fasten upon. In proving his theorem he has 
only reached a reductio ad absurdum instead of aQ. E. D. 

And then these questions of pedigree, chronology, and 
population, or greater trivialities still, with which his 
book is taken up, what conceivable connection have they 
with the material facts of the history ? Suppose every 
one was obliterated or corrected, what appreciable differ- 
ence would there be at last ? They are petty, unessential 
matters affecting the purport of the whole about as much 
as microscopic unevennesses would spoil the stability and 
proportions of a Corinthian column. Suppose a doubt 
could be thrown on the size of Jacob's family, or some 
other number or date, how does this disturb the grand 
scheme of Providence and plan of grace which is here 
developed ? or even the great features of the national 



22 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

history of Israel which are here sketched? If something 
of moment had been laid bare, if doubt had been thrown 
on some essential fact, it would have been different ; but it 
is impossible to rise from the perusal of this book with its 
great swelling words without feeling that this is after all 
a miserable petty business, and the old fable of the 
mountain and the mouse rises involuntarily into one's 
thoughts. 

He does indeed allude to questions of real magnitude, 
as the Creation and the Flood. Here are points which 
men of mark have grappled with, and which are worthy 
of their pen. Here is a broad border land of Eevelation 
and Science. And the question of their possible recon- 
ciliation or hopeless discrepancy is one of vast moment, 
upon which great stores of learning and intellectual 
resources might be profitably laid out. The ground has 
been traversed by men of the highest ability and learning, 
who have not only professed themselves satisfied of the 
essential harmony of that record which the Creator has 
written in the crust of the globe respecting its original 
formation, and that record which he has written on the 
pages of his word; but have owned that it was to 
them one of the most astonishing of all marvels that 
Moses, in that age of the world, should have produced an 
account which without interrupting the regular progress 
of man in scientific inquiry, or leading to the premature 
anticipation of scientific results, is yet in such minute and 
accurate correspondence with them. The marvellous 
agreement in outline none can explain away. The 
details, it is true, are not yet settled ; perhaps they can- 
not be for a long time to come. The difficulty is that 
scientific inquiry has not yet reached its last result. But 
where men of the largest attainments have declared 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 23 

themselves satisfied, Colenso, who has only begun to read 
upon the subject, need not cavil. 

The history of his opinions on the subject of the Deluge 
is frankly related thus : 

""While translating the story of the Flood, I have had a simple-minded, 
but intelligent, native, — one with the docility of a child, but the reasoning 
powers of mature age, — look up and ask, ' Is all that true ? Do you 
really believe that all this happened thus, — that all the beasts, and birds, 
and creeping things upon the earth, large and small, from hot countries 
and cold, came thus by pairs, and entered into the ark with Noah ? And 
did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts and birds of prey, as well 
as the rest ?' " 

That circumstance especially which satisfied him on 
this point was — 

" that volcanic hills exist of immense extent in Auvergne and Languedoc, 
which must have been formed ages before the Noachian Deluge, and 
which are covered with light and loose substances, pumice-stone, &c, that 
must have been swept away by a Flood, but do not exhibit the slightest 
sign of having ever been so disturbed." 

His ability to grapple with such questions as this is 
revealed by the reply he makes to the hypothesis (we 
don't say that it is ours), " that Noah's deluge was only a 
partial one." Nothing, he says, is 

u really gained by supposing the Deluge to have been partial. For, as 
waters must find their own level on the Earth's surface, without a special 
miracle, of which the Bible says nothing, a Flood, which should begin by 
covering the top of Ararat, (if that were conceivable,) or a much lower 
mountain, must necessarily become universal, and in due time sweep over 
the hills of Auvergne." 

The good bishop does not seem to be aware that the 
theory involves the sinking of that region beneath the 
surface of the water of the ocean or contiguous seas, and 



24: PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

its subsequent elevation. This would certainly have 
geologic analogies in its favour ; but whether true or not, 
the reply he makes to it does not touch the point, and 
merely shows that he had not the conception of the sub- 
ject he was arguing about. 

That the Bishop's astronomical abilities about equal 
his geological, may be inferred from the following speci- 
men on p. 9. He is cavilling at the miracle of the sun 
and moon in the days of Joshua, and repelling as inad- 
missible the suggestion that the physical fact which lay 
at the basis of the phenomenon may have been the tem- 
porary arresting of the earth's rotation. We could 
hardly credit our senses as we read the Bishop's reply, in 
which he holds the following language (p. 9). 

"But the Bible says, ' The sun stood still, and the moon stayed,' Josh. 
x. 13 ; and the arresting of the earth's motion, while it might cause the 
appearance of the sun ' standing still,' would not account for the moon 
1 staying.' " 

We would like to know whether any schoolboy, who 
has learned his first lesson in astronomy, can beat that. 
Does not the man know that the moon's diurnal motion in 
the heavens, as well as that of the sun, is apparent and due 
to the earth's rotation ? * We see imputed to him works on 
arithmetic, algebra, and plane trigonometry for schools. 
Can it be that his studies were arrested there, and that 
he never advanced so far as the study of astronomy ? 
Even if he is not willing to build up his faith in religion 
on a book (p. 54), might he not without injury have 
built up his knowledge of science in that manner ? 

At any rate these glimpses satisfy us that it was well 
for the Bishop, and for us, that he paid heed to the 
maxim of Apelles, Ne sutor supra crepidam, and that, 
true to his instincts, he is content to peck at scripture 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 25 

numbers. We stand aghast, as we fancy over what a 
perplexed wilderness we might have had to travel, had 
he gone on in this same way through all the points of 
physical science in their bearing on Christian evidences, 
and we felt obliged to follow him. No traveller beguiled 
by ignis fatuus, through bog and mire, would have had 
a worse or a wearier time. We congratulate ourselves 
that he has not imposed this task upon us. 

These physical matters are mere feints and side issues 
apart from the real assault. It is under the cover of 
arithmetic that he makes his deadly charge. He has no 
intention of scattering his fire. He professes indeed, in 
his introductory remarks, to have detected a vast number 
of assailable points, thus impressing his readers with the 
idea that he has sent his reconnoitering parties far and 
near, that he has examined the intrenchments of Moses 
all around, and that he could make a fearful onset upon 
him from a multitude of quarters, if he were so disposed. 
But he has not chosen to plant his batteries everywhere. 
He tells us first negatively what the difficulties which he 
proposes to adduce are not (p. 49). They are not those 
connected with the creation and deluge, nor with " the 
stupendous character of certain miracles." 

We must pause here in the enumeration to say that 
the Bishop believes in the reality of miracles or he does 
not. If he does, and retains any faith in the supernatu- 
ral facts erai of the New Testament, why does he array 
the stupendous character of miracles here as creating any 
special difficulty in the Pentateuch? If he does not, but 
is here speaking sincerely, and is not throwing together 
a mere ad cajplandum arraj^ of possible objections to the 
Pentateuch, why does he say, (p. 51,) " The notion of 
miraculous or supernatural interferences does not present 

2 



26 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

to my own mind the difficulties which it seems to present 
to some" ? 

Nor do his difficulties arise from " the trivial nature of 
a vast number of conversations and commands ascribed 
directly to Jehovah, especially the multiplied ceremonial 
minutiae laid down in the Levitical law." We are led to 
infer, then, that Colenso would esteem it unbecoming in 
the God in whom he believes to concern himself with little 
things. He might make mountains, but not atoms — ele- 
phants, but not animalculse. He might make general 
laws for the conduct of human life, but not specify in 
detail meats and drinks, though he would thus incorpo- 
rate the lesson that the smallest and most indifferent 
actions should have in them the ^quality of religiousness, 
and that in them all men should be governed by a 
supreme desire to please him. It is, in short, an incor- 
poration into an outward ceremonial of the apostolic 
requirement — 'Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or 
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' 

Nor are his difficulties such as must be " started at 
once in most pious minds" by the regulations of the Pen- 
tateuch respecting slavery. And here he tells us of the 
revulsion of feeling which these created in the mind of a 
" very intelligent Christian native" who was aiding him 
in his translations, and whose "whole soul revolted" 
against them. The Bishop made a shift to get over the 
difficulty for the present by telling him that he supposed 
"such words as these were written down by Moses, and 
believed by him to have been divinely given to him, 
because the thought of them arose in his heart, as he 
conceived, by the inspiration of God, and that hence to 
all such Laws he prefixed the formula, 'Jehovah said 
unto Moses,' without it being on that account necessary 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 27 

for us to suppose that they were actually spoken by the 
Almighty." This we take to be "the thoroughly com- 
petent, well-trained, able and pious native, who had 
helped to translate the whole of the New Testament and 
several books of the Old," (p. 217), and whom the Bishop 
was desirous of admitting to the diaconate without com- 
pelling him to declare that he " unfeignedly believed in 
all the Canonical Scriptures." It would be singular if 
he did believe in them with such teaching. 

It is not enough for Colenso that Moses should have 
ameliorated the system of slavery to an extent which has 
no parallel in the ancient world. If he would justify his 
claim to inspiration, he ought to have put Israel at once un- 
der the inexorable regulations of a perfect and ideal state. 
He should have made no allowance for the hardness of 
their hearts, Matt. xix. 8 ; none for existing usages or 
the then present state of civilization. He must, if 
he would please his critic, ignore all adaptation of 
his code to the people who were to receive it, and cut off 
all possibility of future progress. He must anticipate the 
last results of Christianity working on states and empires, 
laws and institutions for ages ; and breaking away from 
that course of training through which God was conduct- 
ing the world, and Israel for the sake of the world, he 
must produce a code answering precisely to the divine 
ideal. How the contemplation of the geologic eras must 
horrify the censor of Moses, when those monsters now 
imprisoned in the rocky strata were suffered to range 
through the earth and prey upon each other and other 
hapless animals! How could "the great and blessed 
God, the merciful Father," have tolerated such an imper- 
fect state of being for such long ages ? How could he 
abide these gradual evolutions through successive stages, 



28 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 

when lie might have sprung at once to the completed 
result? 

In the judgment of Moses, in which, perhaps, he is so 
unfortunate as to differ from the Bishop, the holding of 
slaves, as regulated and limited by him, was not in itself 
a sinful thing. The relation, limited to seven years in 
the case of Hebrews, unlimited in its term in the case of 
others, but fenced about by humane regulations and by 
the general principles of morality and responsibility to 
Grod inculcated in the Pentateuch, might be suffered to 
exist along with other hardships incident to the imper- 
fect condition of man. He might better leave it to the 
force of religious principles and advancing light gradually 
to do it away, than attempt to extirpate it forcibly from 
a society not yet prepared for it. The Bishop, doubtless, 
since he left off his advocacy of polygamy for the Zulus, 
has educated himself to such a lofty pitch of morality, 
that all these explanations will be thrown away upon 
him. Slavery is an evil. Moses undertook to regulate 
slavery, and implant in men's hearts the principles which 
would ultimately do it away, instead of violently eradi- 
cating it while the hankering after it, and the state of 
things which produced it, still remained. This revolts 
the souls of intelligent Zulus, and the Lord Bishop of 
Natal cannot abide it. 

But all these points are not the points on which our 
author relies. He goes on to swell the array of other 
possible arguments beside these, and teaches us still fur- 
ther to admire his moderation by promising, (p. 56,) to 
" omit for the present a number of plain, but less obvious, 
indications" of the falsity of the Pentateuch. And how 
judiciously he acts in these omissions, we learn from the 
reason he assigns for so doing — "because it may be pos- 



PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 29 

sible, in some, at least, of such cases, to explain the mean- 
ing of the Scripture words in some way, so as to make 
them agree with known facts, or with statements seem- 
ingly contradictory, which are made elsewhere." 

The Bishop, therefore, like a prudent reasoner, is not 
going to waste his strength in marshalling difficulties 
which he sees beforehand can be explained. It is the 
invulnerable iron-clads which are to attack the fort. 

" I shall now proceed to show," he undauntedly pro- 
claims, as he advances to the real assault (p. 60), " by 
means of a number of prominent instances that the books 
of the Pentateuch contain in their own account of the 
story which they profess to relate such remarkable con- 
tradictions and involve such plain impossibilities, that 
they cannot be regarded as true narratives of actual, his- 
torical, matters of fact." And this, though (p. 55) "it 
still remains an integral portion of that book which has 
been the means of revealing to us the name of the only 
living and true God, and has all along been and, as far 
as we know, will never cease to be the mightiest instru- 
ment in the hand of the Divine Teacher, for awakening 
in our minds just conceptions of His character, and of 
His gracious and merciful dealings with the children of 
men." Can any contradiction be produced from the 
Pentateuch comparable to that contained in the para- 
graphs just cited ? 

Note to page 24. — To prevent the possibility of misconception, it may 
be well to state that in ' a whole day ' of twelve hours during* which the 
sun stood still, Josh. x. 13, the moon's motion in its orbit would have car- 
ried it backward 6° or 7°, while its usual apparent motion forward in the 
same time is 180° — 7°-=ll3°. On the supposition of the stoppage of the 
earth's rotation, therefore, tho moon would be ' stayed ' in its diurnal 
course in the heavens, only an inconsiderable and to ordinary observers 
an inappreciable motion remaining, and that in a retrograde direction. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 



The first difficulty alleged with this flourish of trum- 
pets concerns the number of Jacob's family when he 
went down into Egypt. 

Genesis xlvi. 8-27 contains a list of "the names of 
the children of Israel which came into Egypt." These 
are arranged in the order of their mothers, and the 
descendants of each are summed up separately. The 
number here recorded as sprung from Leah is reckoned 
(ver. 15) thirty and three ; from Zilpah (ver. 18) six- 
teen ; from Rachel (ver. 22), including Joseph and his 
two sons, fourteen ; from Bilhah (ver. 25) seven. A 
general summary is then made at the close, vs. 26, 27. 

" All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which 
came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the 
souls were threescore and six : 

" And the sons of Joseph which were born him in 
Egypt, were two souls : all the souls of the house of 
Jacob, which came into Egypt, were three score and 
ten." 

JSTow the point which Colenso makes is this. There 
are two persons named in this list, and who must be 
included to make up the number, but who could not 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 31 

have been born when Jacob went down into Egypt nor 
for a considerable time afterwards. The names in ques- 
tion occur in ver. 12 : 

"And the sons of Judah ; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, 
and Pharez and Zarah ; but Er and Onan died in the 
land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron 
and Hamul." 

•' Now if Er and Onan who ' died in the land of Canaan' 
be dropped from the list, it will be necessary to include 
in the enumeration Hezron and Hamul the sons of 
Pharez, or there will be a deficiency in the descendants 
of Leah, as well as in the total number of the descend- 
ants of Jacob. But that Hezron and Hamul could not 
have been born prior to the descent into Egypt he under- 
takes to show in the following manner : 

" Now Judah was forty-two* years old, according to the story, when he 
went down with Jacob into Egypt. 

" But, if we turn to G-. xxxviii. we shall find that, in the course of these 
forty-two years of Judah's life, the following events are recorded to have 
happened. 

"(i) Judah grows up, marries a wife — ' at that time,' v. 1, that is, after 
Joseph's being sold into Egypt, when he was ' seventeen years old,' 
Gr. xxxvii. 2, and when Judah, consequently, was twenty years old, — and 
has, separately, three sons by her. 

" (ii) The eldest of these three sons grows up, is married, and dies. 

" The second grows to maturity (suppose in another year), marries h's 
brother's widow, and dies. 

" * Joseph was thirty years old, when he ' stood before Pharaoh,' as 
governor of the land of Egypt, G-. xli. 46 ; and from that time nine years 
elapsed, (seven of plenty and two of famine,) before Jacob came down to 
Egypt. At that time, therefore, Joseph was thirty-nine years old. But 
Judah was about three years older than Joseph ; for Judah was born in 
the fourth year of Jacob's double marriage, G-. xxix. 35, and Joseph in the 
seventh, G-. xxx. 24-26, xxxi. 41. Hence Judah was forty-two years old 
when Jacob went down to Egypt." 



32 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

" The third grows to maturity (suppose in another year still), but 
declines to take his brother's -widow to wife. 

" She then deceives Judah himself, conceives by him, and in due time 
bears him twins, Pharez and Zarah. 

" (iii) One of these twins also grows to maturity, and has two sons, 
Hezron and Hamul, born to him, before Jacob goes down into Egypt. 

" The above being certainly incredible, we are obliged to conclude that 
one of the two accounts must be untrue." (pp. 61, 62.) 

We cheerfully grant the Bishop his premises, but can- 
not agree with him in his conclusion. We would not 
be prepared to admit that any writer of ordinary sense 
could so stultify himself, as he here alleges that Moses 
has done ; not, at least, until we had first exhausted 
every effort for the reconciliation of his statements. We 
can, therefore, but repeat the explanation which has 
satisfied a multitude of candid and intelligent minds from 
the beginning and which satisfies our own, notwith- 
standing the sneer at those who have adduced it as will- 
ing to ' do violence to the plain reading of the Scripture 
in order to evade the difficulty,' and as ' having recourse 
to shifts in order to avoid confessing the manifest truth 
in this matter.' 

The sacred writer evidently desires to make out the 
round number seventy (ver. 27) as the total of Jacob's 
family when he went into Egypt. In order to arrive at 
this result he allows himself a certain latitude of expres- 
sion, which those, who are disposed to carp at words, 
may charge upon him as verbal inaccuracies, though he 
makes his meaning sufficiently plain, and no one but a 
caviller is in any danger of being deceived by it. Thus 
in ver. 8 Jacob is himself included, as well as his sons, 
among " the children of Israel which came into Egypt." 
He is also counted along with " his sons and his daugh- 
ters" by Leah to complete the number thirty-three (ver. 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 33 

15). And in ver. 27 " the sons of Joseph which were born 
him in Egypt* 1 are included among " the souls of the 
house of Jacob which came into Egypt." It is plain, 
therefore, that the narrator was more concerned about 
the substantial truth of his statements than about punc- 
tilious precision in regard to phrases. 

Now, including Er and Onan, the two who had 
deceased in Canaan, the family of Jacob, up to the time 
of his entering Egypt, amounted to seventy souls. Or 
again, if these two names be omitted, and the vacancy so 
created be filled up by two descendants of the same 
branch of the family born in Egypt, viz. Hezron and 
Hamul, the number will again be seventy. It no more 
conflicts with the good faith of this family register that it 
admits two grandsons of Judah born in Egypt, than that 
it admits the two sons of Joseph also born in Egypt, and 
then sums all up as " the souls of the house of Jacob 
which came into Egypt." The grandsons of Judah came 
into Egypt in precisely the same sense that the sons 
of Joseph came, viz. in the loins of their father, Heb. 
vii. 10 ; and in a sense kindred to that in which God 
brought Jacob up again from Egypt Greu. xlvi. 4, i. e. 
in the persons of his descendants. 

But why, urges Colenso, are not 

" the children of Reuben's sons, and Simeon's, and Levi's, &c, all named 
and counted in like manner, as being in their father though not yet born ?" 
" Why not also the great-great-grandsons, and so on ad infinitum ?" And 
11 why does the sacred writer draw any contrast between the three score 
and ten persons who went down into Egypt, and the multitude as the stars 
of heaven who came out, since these last as well as the former were all in 
the loins of their father Jacob ?" See Deut. x. 22. 

The reason, doubtless, is because Judah adopted his 
grandsons Hezron and Hamul in place of his deceased 

2* 



34: THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

sons Er and Onan : just as Jacob adopted Joseph's two 
sons to be his own, Gen. xlviii. 5, 6, for the sake of 
giving him the double portion among his children which 
was his birthright, 1 Chron. v. 1, 2, at the same time 
declaring that this adoption did not go beyond these 
two. That Hezron and Hamul were thus adopted by 
Judah is not indeed declared in so many words, for the 
sacred history makes no further mention of them ; and, 
of course, the idea would be scouted by Colenso, et id 
genus omne. But we feel warranted in inferring it, first, 
from the appearance of their names in this register, 
where they plainly stand as substitutes for Er and Onan. 
Secondly, from Num. xxvi. 19, where, in an enumera- 
tion of the Israelitish families existing at the time of the 
exodus, Er and Onan are alone mentioned of all the 
descendants of Jacob from whom families did not spring. 
There must, therefore, have been some special reason 
why they, in particular, are named, when other grand- 
children who died without issue are omitted. ISTow, 
what more probable reason can be suggested than that 
they were regarded as perpetuated in the descendants of 
their two nephews, adopted in their stead ? Thirdly, 
from Num. xxvi. 21, where it appears that Hezron and 
Hamul gave rise to families in Israel distinct from the 
family of Pharez, their father. But, as appears from a 
comparison of Num. xxvi. with the register before us, 
the honour of originating permanent families in Israel 
was confined to those descendants of Jacob who were 
living at the time of his going down into Egypt. The 
only exceptions are, first, Manasseh and Ephraim, who 
were raised from the rank of families to the dignity of 
tribes ; the families or subdivisions of these tribes must, 
therefore, of necessity, be drawn from amongst their 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 35 

offspring who were not yet born ; and, secondly, Hezron 
and Hamul.* And how do Hezron and Hamui, though 
born in Egypt, come to be the heads of distinct families 
or tribal subdivisions, contrary to the universal analogy 
of Jacob's other descendants ? What answer can be 
given, or what answer need be given, except that they 
were, by Judah's adoption, substituted for Er and Onan, 
and thus succeeded to the rights which the latter would 
have possessed but for their untimely death ?f 

"But," continues the pupil and admirer of the Zulus 
(p. 69), " if Hezron and Hamul are substituted for Er 
and Onan, for whom are Heber and Malchiel, the sons 

* It is scarcely necessary to remark that the tribe of Levi formed no 
real exception. There were but three leading families in this tribe, and 
these were named after the three sons of Levi, from whom they were res- 
pectively descended, Num, xxvi. 57. The families spoken of in ver. 58, 
the Libnites, Hebronites, Mahlites, etc., are not distinct from and co-ordi- 
nate with the preceding, but, as appears from Num. iii. 21, 27, 33, they 
were subdivisions of the proper tribal families, necessitated by the distri- 
bution of ministerial functions in this sacerdotal tribe, and its separation 
into different encampments. 

f An illustration of Colenso's carelessness in argument, or ignorance of 
Hebrew, or both, which is very fine in its way, is afforded on page 68. 
Kurtz argues from Gen. xlvi. 5, where the household of Jacob is spoken 
of as comprising himself, his sons, their little ones and their wives, that, in 
the view of the writer, Jacob's grandsons were still young and had no 
children of their own. Our author replies with a triumphant air to this 
"feeble argument,'* that Benjamin is called a little one, Gen. xliv. 20, at 
a time when he " had actually ten sons of his own," Gen. xlvi. 21. He 
never seems, in his innocence, to suspect that the original term is totally 
distinct in the two cases. In one it is f]tp which Gesenius defines to 
mean parvuli, as opposed to young men and maidens, Ezek. ix. 6, as 
well as to adults, Ex. xii. 37 ; in the other it is *)t3j"3, which means not 
only small in respect of size, but minimus natu, and is applied to Benja- 
min as the youngest of Jacob's sons. We are strongly inclined to suspect 
that he only saw Kurtz through the medium of a translation, as it is the 
English form of expression which betrayed him into the blunder. 



36 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

of Beriah, Asker's son, ver. 17, supposed to be substi- 
tuted?" 

We really cannot answer this. We are not aware 
that they are " supposed to be substituted " for anybody. 
If the bishop thinks they are, and will give reasons for 
his opinion equal or comparable to those which have 
been alleged in the preceding instance, we are open to 
conviction. Till then we will abide by our present belief, 
that Heber and Malchiel were born before the descent 
into Egypt, and are named in the register for that reason. 

Here we might rest the case. The objections made to 
the truthfulness of this family register demand nothing 
more than has now been said for their refutation. But 
before dismissing the matter, we desire to show more 
fully the impregnability of this portion of the sacred 
record, and the futility of the attacks made upon it. 

The list given us in Num. xxvi. of the tribal fami- 
lies, as they existed in the days of Moses, affords irrefra- 
gable evidence of the correctness and the antiquity of 
Jacob's family register, in Gen. xlvi. ; and, on the 
other hand, this latter renders unimpeachable testimony 
to the truth of the former. We have here, in fact, two 
witnesses, demonstrably independent, and yet perfectly 
corroborating each other. The differences between them 
are of such a nature that one cannot have been taken 
from the other, nor both from a common source, nor can 
both have proceeded from the same hand, least of all the 
hand of a forger, who would not have convicted himself 
by the admission of such apparent discrepancies. Nor 
can this document, purporting to be Jacob's family regis- 
ter, be the product of a later period, made out on the 
basis of the tribal families existing when it was pre- 
pared, by concluding back from these to assumed proge- 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 37 

nitors, and hence to be regarded as an d posteriori con- 
struction instead of a hond fide historical narrative. For, 
not to insist upon the difficulty with which such a theory 
would be pressed, arising out of what may be styled the 
irregular construction of this ancient register, making all 
the names in some families sons, in others adding a 
daughter, in others still grandsons, in which it is true 
to the life if it records facts, but unaccountable if it be 
the theoretical deduction of a later age ; — not to insist 
upon this, how is it to be explained, in the first place, 
that several names are found in this register to which, 
as appears from Num. xxvi., there were no families 
subsequently corresponding? There is, Gen. xlvi. 10, 
Obad, son of Simeon ; ver. 17, Ishuah and his sister 
Serah, children of Asher ; ver. 21, Becher, Gera, and 
Rosh, sons of Benjamin, from whom no families seem to 
have sprung. They must, therefore, either have died 
without issue, or their descendants were too few to con- 
stitute a separate family, and were accordingly reckoned 
as belonging to one of their brothers' houses, agreeably 
to the principle set forth in 1 Chron. xxiii. 11. In 
either case their names were of no permanent national 
consequence, there being no representative families upon 
which they were impressed. How comes it to pass, 
then, that we meet names of this character in this regis- 
ter? It is a sorry shift to say that they may be purely 
fictitious. For, apart from the considerations that this 
is abandoning the hypothesis of an a posteriori construc- 
tion, and that it brands the writer, without any evidence, 
with being a wilful forger of what is false, which Colenso 
expressly disclaims,* and which would, in fact, be very 

* Page 16, note * "I use the expression 'unhistorical,' or 'not his- 
torically true,' throughout, rather than 'fictitious,' since the word 'fiction' 



38 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

inconsistent in him after the disgust he expresses at 
Hengstenberg for charging his opponents with dishonesty 
(p. 69) ; the notion of fictitious genealogies and dry, 
unmeaning lists of names is in itself sufficiently amus- 
ing. The writer's imagination or invention must have 
been given to very odd flights, if he thought to divert 
either himself or his readers in this way. 

In the second place, the originality of this register in 
Gen. xlvi. and its independence of the list of families 
in Num. xxvi. appears still further from the diversity 
in their general construction, and the order in which the 
several tribes are arranged ; and yet more plainly from 
the diversity in the names themselves, some of which 
have undergone considerable alteration in the long in- 
terval between the periods, which they respectively 
represent. When we recall the great changes which the 
names of many modern families have suffered both in 
their orthography and pronunciation, we need not be 
surprised that the lapse of centuries brought about like 
results in Israel. It is, in fact, just what ought upon 
natural principles to have taken place, and yet what it 
would not have entered the mind of a forger to contrive. 
At any rate the differences between these two lists are 
such as to show beyond question, that one is not derived 
from the other. A few apparent differences in the 
authorized English version are due to a divergent ortho- 
graphy adopted by our translators, where the forms in 
the original are coincident, as Pballu and Pallu, son of 
Eeuben ; Phuva and Pua, son of Issachar ; Isui and 
Jesui son of Asher. In other cases the diversity belongs 
to the Hebrew form of the name, as Jemuel, and Zohar, 

is frequently understood to imply a conscious dishonesty on the part of the 
writer, an intention to deceive." 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 39 

sons of Simeon, called in Numbers Nemuel and Zerah ; 
Job, son of Issachar, in Numbers Jashub ; Ziphion, 
Ezbon and Arodi, sons of Gad, in Numbers Zephon, 
Ozni, Arod ; Ehi, Muppim and Huppim, sons of Benja- 
min, in Numbers Ahiram, Shupham (Heb. SKphupham) 
and Hupham ; Hushim, son of Pan, in Numbers, Shu- 
bam. These varying forms of the same name are nearly 
enough related either in their radicals or their significa- 
tion * to account for the transition, which occurred in 
the usage of common life. But by no possibility could 
one list have been taken from the other, or the ancestral 
names be factitious, and inferred from those of families. 
A still more remarkable difference between the lists 
of these two chapters, and one which tends still more 
strikingly to establish their independence of each other, 
has respect to the sons of Benjamin and the families 
which sprang from them. In Gen. xlvi, 21, Naaman and 
Ard are said to have been sons of Benjamin. Num. xxvi. 
40, declares that the families of the Ardites and of the 
Naamites were descended from Ard and Naaman, sons 
of Bela, Benjamin's eldest son. The two accounts differ 
too palpably to be traceable to a common source. On 
the other hand there is no real disagreement or discre- 
pancy between them. The sons of Benjamin of this 
name died doubtless without issue, and hence no families 
are derived from them. Benjamin, therefore, to preserve 
the number of his sons intact, adopted in their stead two 
children of his eldest son, naming them after the sons 
whom he had lost. They thus succeeded to the rights 
of sons born before the descent into Egypt, and each 
gave name to a separate family. The two accounts are 

* As if, to employ an English analogy, the name of a famihy was changed 
from Pike to Fish, or from Smith to Wright, or from Coon to Khun. 



40 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

thus perfectly harmonious, though drawn from entirely 
independent sources. And we have here again a fresh 
instance of adoption in the patriarchal family, which' 
both corroborates and is corroborated by the instances 
previously adduced. 

If now, as has been shown, the register of Jacob's 
sons in Gen. xlvi., and the list of tribal families in 
Num. xx vi. are quite independent in their origin, 
then the truth and accuracy of both are indisputable. 
Two such documents involving such a number of parti- 
culars could never agree by chance. If they are inde- 
pendent witnesses, and their witness agrees together, 
they are both true. Now, with all the superficial diversi- 
ties, which have been already exhibited, these lists do in 
fact upon a narrow inspection tally throughout. For 
every family set down in Numbers, a corresponding 
name is recorded in Genesis. These uniformlv succeed 
each other in the like order, with the single exception of 
the descendants of Benjamin, and that for a reason which 
has just been explained. Furthermore, the names are, 
in a vast majority of cases, precisely identical ; and where 
they are not, the evidence is but strengthened by the 
appearance of such changes as lapse of time, constant 
usage, and perhaps family caprice would be apt to intro- 
duce. With its genuineness and reliability certified by 
such tests as these, the register of Jacob's sons can with- 
stand the attacks of a hundred Colensos. "What does all 
his paltry pecking at it amount to, beside such evidences 
in its favour ? In a like case affecting the validity of a 
legal document, would the jury have to leave the court- 
room before making up their minds to a unanimous 
verdict ? 

It is apparent that the number of persons composing a 



THE FAMILY OP JUDAH. 41 

family may be stated variously, and yet each statement 
be entirely correct. Everything depends upon the prin- 
ciple of enumeration. The parents may be included or 
omitted. The children of both sexes may be reckoned, 
or only those of one. The statement may embrace 
those only who are living, or. at home at the time ; or it 
may extend likewise to the absent and the departed. It 
may cover the first generation only, or all the descen- 
dants. A certain measure of liberty was possessed 
accordingly by the author of Jacob's family register, 
without departing from truth or becoming inexact. 
Omitting Jacob the number would be sixty-nine ; omit- 
ting Joseph and his household, who were in Egypt 
already, it would be sixty-six ; omitting the two that 
were deceased, or their substitutes subsequently born, it 
would be sixty-four ; omitting the daughter, ver. 15, and 
grand-daughter, ver. 17, it would be sixty-two ; and, on 
the other hand, including all these and in addition 
" Jacob's sons' wives," ver. 26, the number would have 
been at least eighty-two, and perhaps more. Inasmuch 
as one of these modes of enumeration was just as correct 
as another, it was within the discretion of the writer to 
select whichever he might prefer. He chose the enu- 
meration which he has given us, and which yields as its 
total the number seventy. And there can be little doubt 
that he was influenced in his selection, in part at least, 
by the desire to produce that number. 

A round number and a familiar number is always pre- 
ferred to another, if nothing is sacrificed by it. This is 
manifest in indefinite numbers where precision is of no 
consequence, or is not pretended to. We speak of ten 
or a dozen, of fifty or a hundred. And we observe that 
even Colenso (p. 90) is guilty of calling the old Greek 



42 THE FAMILY OF JTJDAH. 

version, which according to tradition was made by 
seventy-two interpreters, the LXX. 

It is particularly the case if a number has been fixed by 
usage or hallowed by association. We never speak of 
thirteen apostles, or of fourteen, but only of twelve. 
Does this warrant the inference that we never heard of 
the election of Matthias or the appointment of Paul ? 
And we never hear of the thirteen tribes of Israel but 
only of the twelve ; so that the inspired author of the 
book of Eevelation vii. 4-8, though professedly speaking 
of " all the tribes of the children of Israel," omits one to 
preserve the familiar number. Perhaps, if an "intelli- 
gent " Zulu were to question his Bishop about this, he 
might be told that the writer was clearly ignorant of the 
existence of the tribe of Dan. And if the same Zulu 
were helping him " translate " 1 'Kiogs xi. 35, 36, he 
might come to the conclusion that in the arithmetic of 
the Jews ten and one make twelve. The sacredness of a 
past association evidently controlled the language of 
Joseph's brethren, in saying (Gen. xlii. 32), " We be 
twelve brethren," although one was not. A like affec- 
tion for a number similarly hallowed may have led the 
patriarch to fill up his family to its ancient dimensions 
by adopting two born in Egypt in the stead of the two 
who had died in Canaan ; and hence that feature of the 
register at which Colenso so needlessly cavils.* 

An additional motive for the preference of a particular 
number may lie in some relation of correspondence 
which it suggests. Thus Elijah, in building an altar 
in the presence of a schismatical and apostate people, 
constructed it of "twelve stones, according to the 

* A modern parallel, as suggested by Pro£ Mahan, may be found in 
"Wordsworth's ballad, We are Seven. 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 43 

number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob," 1 Kings 
xviii. 31. The sentence of wandering in the wilderness 
fixes its duration by the time that the spies, whose false 
report occasioned it, were searching the promised land, 
Num. xiv. 33, 34. Daniel (ix. 24), sighing for the 
restoration of Israel at the end of seventy years' cap- 
tivity, is informed that seven times seventy years must 
intervene before the coming of the great Eestorer. Mat- 
thew omits a few unimportant names from the genealogy 
of Christ, in order so to adjust its three great periods as 
to exhibit fourteen generations in each, Matt. i. 17. Such 
correspondences, which are frequent in the Scriptures 
generally, especially abound in the ritual, where all is 
significant and full of mystical allusions. As a single 
example, witness the cycle of sevens in the sacred 
periods, from the weekly Sabbath through the seventh 
month with its day of atonement and the seventh year to 
the highest of all, the year of jubilee, Lev. xxv. 8, 9, 
each in its various grade at once a commemoration and 
a prefiguration of that rest of God, with which the num- 
ber seven was associated (Gen. ii. 3), and into which it 
is man's privilege and destiny to enter, Heb. iv. 3-5. 

Now, at a time when instruction was so largely con- 
veyed by mysterious hints in figures and symbols, it need 
not surprise us to find the suggestion of a momentous 
truth in the number of Jacob's family at this great crisis 
in their history. Nor need we be surprised that such a 
mode of enumeration was selected as might suggest a 
truth which was to be inculcated. That this is not 
purely fanciful, appears from Moses' directing the atten- 
tion of the people expressly to it, Deut. xxxii. 8, ' When 
the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, 
when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds 



44 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

of the people (Heb. peoples) according to the number of 
the children of Israel.' There was, therefore, a significant 
relation between ' the number of the children of Israel ' 
and the nations of mankind. The tenth chapter of Gene- 
sis, which gives an account of the sons of Noah and their 
dispersion over the world, makes the number to be 
seventy. With this the number of Jacob's family at the 
time when it was about to pass into a nation, when it 
was about to receive its permanent organization and its 
tribal divisions to be determined, precisely corresponded. 
The universal aim of Israel, its world-wide relations, 
which were in so many ways explicitly set forth, are 
here impressed upon its origin in a numerical symbol. 
That this number was regarded as not wholly casual 
but significant, and that its significance was kept in mind, 
appears still further from ' the seventy elders of Israel,' 
of whom we repeatedly read, Ex. xxiv. 1, Num. xi. 
16-25, Ezek. viii. 11, a body perpetuated in the Sanhe- 
drim.* As seventy is not a multiple of twelve, it could 

* This number continued to be so understood by the later Jews, as appears 
from numerous passages in their writings. The following from the book 
of Zohar, quoted by Lightfoot, Heb. Exercit. on Luke iii. 36, may serve as 
a specimen. " Seventy souls went down with Jacob into Egypt, that they 
might restore the seventy families dispersed by the confusion of tongues." 

The prevalence of this opinion further appears from the systematic 
alterations made in the Septuagint both in Gen. x. and Gen. xlvi. 
The seventy nations in the common text are distributed among the sons 
of Noah in the following manner, viz. Japheth 14, Ham 30, Shem 26. 
The account of Nimrod (vs. 8-12) is a manifest parenthesis relating to a 
monarch and conqueror and not the progenitor of a nation. Accordingly, 
his name and that of Asshur are not reckoned. If, however, these names 
be counted, the correspondence with Jacob's family will be destroyed. 
In order to restore this correspondence, while including these names, the 
Greek translators took the liberty of inserting three additional names in 
the list of Xoah's descendants, viz. Elisa in ver. 2, and two Cainans, vs. 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 45 

not have been determined by the number of the tribes, 
but must be traced to some other source. 

When our Lord was about organizing the true Israel, 
who believed in and embraced him, he retained at the 
outset these numerical correspondences. He ordained 
twelve apostles, preserving herein the number of the 
tribes, and intimating that Israel is perpetuated in its full 
organization in spite of the excision of its apostate mem- 
bers. He sent forth seventy disciples, preserving thus 
the universal feature of Israel, and that which looked to 
the subjugation of all nations. But when the new Jeru- 
salem is complete Rev. xxi. 12 etc., the twelve dominates 
and the seventy disappears. The seed of Abraham has 
then swollen to its utmost expansion, and is commensu- 
rate with the whole body of the redeemed. The nations 
of the world have been absorbed into the tribes of Israel. 
The holy city bears the names of the tribes upon its gates, 
indicating who alone have the right of admission within 
its walls. And thus Abraham is the father of many 
nations, Rom. iv. 17, and the heir of the world, verse 13. 
And the ultimate completion of the promise Gen. xvii. 4, 
" unto thy seed will I give this land " is something far 
more glorious than the peopling of Canaan to its full 
dimensions with his lineal descendants. It is not without 
a meaning that the same word in Hebrew and in Greek 
signifies both land and earth. So that the divine grant 
in its largest sense really is " to thy spiritual seed will I 

22, 24 ; the total thus becomes seventy-five. And then in the summa- 
tion of the house of Jacob (Glen. xlvi. 27) they substitute seventy-five for 
seventy, making up the number by tracing the descendants of Joseph 
beyond the first generation. Stephen retains this number in his speech 
(Acts vii. 14) as the one most familiar to Greek-speaking Jews, and as 
sufficiently accurate for his immediate purpose, being in fact strictly cor- 
rect upon the modo of enumeration adopted by the lxx translators. 



46 THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

give this earth." All this is darkly hinted, nay, is ger- 
minally involved in this original register of Israel. The 
miserable quibbles, which we have been refuting, 
uttered without an inkling of its real significance, cannot 
disturb its truth, its certainty, or the fulness of its 
import. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABERNACLE, COM- 
PARED WITH THE NUMBER OF THE CONGREGATION. 

The second objection of our author is so peculiarly 
Colensonian, that we are quite willing, as far as it is con- 
cerned, to accept his disclaimer (p. 13), that he has not 
borrowed from De "Wette in particular or the German 
Rationalists in general. He finds a difficulty, it seems, 
in Lev. viii. 1-4. 

" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying 

Gather thou all the congregation together unto the 
door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Moses 
did as the Lord commanded him ; and the assembly was 
gathered together unto the door of the tabernacle of the 
congregation." 

Here it is urged that " all the congregation " must 
mean 

" the whole body of the people, at all events the adult males in the prime 
of life among them, and not merely the elders or heads of the people." 
"The 603,550 warriors Num. ii. 32, certainly must have formed a part of 
the whole congregation, leaving out of consideration the multitude of old 
men, women, and children." " I cannot," he tells us, " with due regard 
to the truth, allow myself to believe, or attempt to persuade others to 
believe, that such expressions as the above can possibly be meant to be 
understood of the elders only." 

He then demonstrates by a series of calculations, that 



48 THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 

this large mass of human beings could never have stood 
at the door of the tabernacle, that they could not even 
have stood along "the whole end of the tabernacle" 
which, was but eighteen feet wide, nor could they have 
been crowded into the entire court behind, as well as in 
front of the tabernacle. 

We have carefully followed the Bishop through his 
figures, and we assure our readers that they are quite 
correct. If anybody has ever been in doubt before, let 
him never question it again, that 603,550 people could 
not stand in a court one hundred cubits long by fifty 
broad. For this is what the argument proves; just this, 
and nothing more. And now, if the Bishop would make 
the attempt, we think it not unlikely that he might prove 
it impossible for the Houses of Parliament, where Great 
Britain meets by her representatives, to contain the 
entire population of the British islands. And if the full- 
grown men of Victoria's empire were packed in solid 
layers, one above another, over the whole area on which 
these houses stand, he might cipher out the height of the 
column they would make. 

But while honouring the Bishop's figures, we must add 
that as an argument to discredit the Mosaic narrative, 
these calculations are liable to two objections, which 
seriously vitiate their results. The first respects the num- 
ber of people expected or actually present ; the second, 
the space which they were to occupy. 

If we turn to p. 105 of the book before us, we shall 
find a passage quoted, Ex. xii. 21-28, whose bearings 
upon this subject the Bishop ought not to have over- 
looked. We there read 

" Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel^ and said 
unto them," etc., etc. 



THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABEKNACLE. 49 

" And the people bowed the head and worshipped. 
And the children of Israel went away, and did as the Lord 
had commanded Moses and Aaron." 

And from ver. 3 it appears that this call for " all the 
elders of Israel" was in pursuance of the divine com- 
mand to speak unto all the congregation of Israel. 

So again in Ex. xix. 7, 8 : 

" And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, 
and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord 
commanded him. And all the people answered together 
and said, All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do." 

In Deut v. 1, " Moses called all Israel" and addressed 
them ; in the course of his address, he says, ver. 23, " Ye 
came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes and 
your elders." 

It hence appears, in spite of our author's inability to 
believe what so thoroughly invalidates his objection, that 
the congregation of Israel might be represented by their 
elders, and the elders might be addressed or spoken of 
as the congregation who were represented by them. 
This mode of speaking is a familiar one in ordinary life. 
England is said to do, what her authorized representa- 
tives or agents do. Colenso himself, in referring, (p. 34,) 
to " the great body of the church," feels it necessary to 
add, by way of explanation, " not the clergy only, but 
the clergy and laity." 

The Bishop has given himself the needless trouble to 
cite a number of passages, in which the congregation 
means not the elders but the people generally. But the 
fact that in those passages the congregation is not spoken 
of representatively, does not weaken the force of the 
equally evident fact that in other passages it is so spoken 
of. And that this is the case in the instance now before 

3 



50 THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 

us, is rendered more than probable by the mention, Lev. 
ix. 1, of the calling together of " the elders of Israel " for 
the same purpose for which in viii. 2 "all the congrega- 
tion" were summoned; and these elders are further 
spoken of as " the children of Israel," ver. 3, and " all 
the congregation," ver. 5. Upon the most liberal con- 
struction, all that we can be required to assume is the 
elders and a promiscuous assembly besides. A mass 
meeting of the Democratic party does not mean the entire 
party en masse. All are summoned, not in the sense 
that all are expected or required to attend, but that none 
are excluded. A town meeting may be held, though not 
a fiftieth part of the inhabitants of the place are present. 
It has never been our good fortune to visit the city of 
Lexington, Ky. But as we know that Eev. Dr. Brecken- 
ridge some time ago called a meeting of its citizens in the 
Court-house on important business, and, as they actually 
assembled, we suppose that we must infer that there are 
not more than a thousand citizens there. 

Again, Colenso's argument assumes that the congrega- 
tion must have been gathered " within the court." But 
although this is the basis of all his computations, the 
court is not once mentioned or alluded to in the connec- 
tion. He infers, however, that they must have been 
assembled within these limits ; first, because they were to 
be gathered unto (or at, as the preposition is occasionally 
rendered) the door of the tabernacle, as if the crowd 
would not be just as much at the door, no matter how far 
back its farther extremity extended. And secondly, be- 
cause they were summoned to witness the ceremony of 
Aaron's consecration. But the text says nothing of their 
witnessing it ; still less that all, who were there, were to 
witness it, or did witness it. They might be present to 



THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 51 

signify their interest and participation in it; just as the 
people were without, when Zacharias went into the tem- 
ple to burn incense, Luke i. 9, 10. The court was no 
more designed or intended to hold the entire body of the 
people, than the holy of holies was to contain Him who 
made it his symbolical residence. The small dimensions 
of the symbol, and its inadequacy to embrace that which 
it represented, might be objected to the one as well as 
to the other. 



CHAPTER in. 

MOSES AS'L JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 

The next difficulty is found in — 

Dent i. 1. ■ These be the words which Moses spate 
unto all Israel.' 

Deut. v. i. ; And Moses called all Israel and said 
unto them . . . .' 

Josh. viii. 34, 35. ' And afterward he read all the 
words of the law, the blessinsrs and cursings, according 
to all that is written in the book of the law. There was 
not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua 
read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the 
women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were 
conversant among them.' 

" Xow." argues the Bishop, M no human voice, unless 
strengthened by a miracle, of which the Scripture tells 
us nothing, could have reached the ears of a crowded 
mass of people as large as the whole population of 
London." 

Unfortunately for the argument, this mark of the 
1 unhistorical ' is common to all history, even the most 
modern and the best attested. It is natural to infer from 
the above that no address is ever made to the public in 
London. Hereafter we shall expect some reasoner of an 
arithmetical turn to establish that Washington's farewell 



MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 53 

address, containing what he had to say to the people of 
the United States, was ' unhistorical ;' also that Queen 
Victoria never issued a proclamation to her subjects, and 
that no general ever gave orders to his army provided 
he commanded more than a thousand men. 

It seems to be a pitiable thing to be obliged to repeat 
here such a familiar, e very-day fact, as that public and 
formal announcements are often made without the slight- 
est expectation that all, or even the thousandth part of 
those to whom they are addressed, and who are thus 
presumptively made acquainted with the subjects of 
them, will actually hear them. When the Roman 
f eciales made their formal demand of reparation from a 
people with whom they had cause of quarrel, or when 
they uttered their declaration of war at the national 
boundary, the whole nation was presumed to be thus 
apprised of it. The proclamations at Charing Cross 
were for the English people. And what a voice must 
those champions have had who threw down their chal- 
lenge to all the world ! 

And again, is it necessary to remind the bishop of the 
maxim, Qui facit per alium, facit per se ? From Gen. 
xxiv. 10, he would probably infer that the servant of 
Abraham started off alone, driving ten camels ; but 
ver. 32 speaks of ( the men that were with him.' We 
constantly speak of Christ feeding the five thousand, 
though Matthew xiv. 19, tells us distinctly that ' he 
gave the loaves to his disciples and the disciples to the 
multitude.' According to Neh. viii. 3, Ezra read in 
the law, and the ears of all the people were attentive ; 
but that his single voice was not expected to reach the 
entire multitude appears from vers. 7, 8, where it is said 
that he was aided by the Levites. With such analogies 



54 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 

one would think that no man in his senses could stumble 
at the expressions which have given offence to the 
Bishop, even if no explanation was expressly furnished. 
But what shall we think when we find that we are 
explicitly told how it was that Moses addressed all Israel, 
and Joshua read to them the blessings and curses of the 
law ? "Was not the Bishop aware, or did he purposely 
conceal the fact, that, according to Deut. xxvii. 1, 
Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people, 
and, according to ver. 9, Moses and the priests the Levites 
spake unto all Israel ? So in Deut. xxvii. 14, the Levites 
are directed to utter at Ebal and Gerizim with a loud 
voice unto all the men of Israel, the very things which 
Joshua, viii. 34, read before them. 



CHAPTER IY. 

the extent of the camp, compared with the 
priest's 

PEOPLE. 



priest's duties and the daily necessities of the 



A fresh ground of cavil and misrepresentation, we 
can characterize it by no milder term, is found in Lev. 
iv. 11, 12, where the priest is directed, after burning 
upon the altar the fat of a bullock, offered in sacrifice 
for the sin of a priest, to { carry ' the rest of the animal 
1 without the camp unto a clean place.' Now Colenso 
adopts Scott's estimate, that the encampment of Israel 
may be computed to have been about twelve miles 
square, that is, about the size of London. There were 
but three priests, Aaron, Eleazar, and Ithamar. Accord- 
ingly, 

" The offal of these sacrifices would have had to be carried by Aaron 
himself, or one of his sons, a distance of six miles." "In fact, we have 
to imagine the priest having himself to carry, on his back on foot, from 
St. Paul's to the outskirts of the metropolis, the skin, and flesh, and head, 
and legs, and inwards, and dung, even the whole bullock." 

Our author, in his eagerness to fasten a blunder upon 
Moses, has committed an egregious one himself. Our 
translators here use carry as a sufficient approximation 
to the original expression for every practical purpose, 
and one which no sensible person was in any danger of 



56 THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP. 

misunderstanding. Colenso presses the English word 
to a sense which does not represent the original at all. 
But, suppose that for a moment we do not look behind 
the common version. Then we must understand from 
Gen. xlvi. 5, that the sons of Israel carried Jacob their 
father, and their little ones and their wives " on their 
backs on foot " in the wagons. The Chaldeans must 
have carried Job's camels away " on their backs on foot," 
Job i. 17. And in the same way, 2 Chron. xii. 9, Shi- 
shak king of Egypt must have carried away the shields 
of gold, and so, 2 Kings xviii. 11, Israel must have been 
carried by the king of Assyria. From which we infer 
that those monarchs must have had unusually strong 
backs. 

It should be known, however, that all this 'carrying 
business is foisted into the text by Colenso himself. The 
word which Moses uses means simply to remove, irre- 
spective of the mode, or, more exactly still, "cause to go 
forth," without designating the agent employed in the 
removal. That the removal was not performed per- 
sonally by the priest is apparent not only from the con- 
sideration that the removal and burning of what was 
not offered in sacrifice was in no sense of the term a 
sacerdotal function, but also from the fact that the con- 
trary explicitly appears, not only in parallel cases but in 
the very case under consideration. 

In the ceremony of the red heifer, Num. xix. 1-10, 
which was for special reasons sacrificed without the 
camp, the priest must attend at the place in order to 
sprinkle the blood, which was a duty peculiarly belong- 
ing to the priesthood. And yet, though he was at the 
spot, two men were required to be present, who are 
expressly distinguished from him and from one another, 



THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP. 57 

the one to burn the heifer, ' her skin, and her flesh, and 
her blood, with her dung,' and the other to l gather up 
the ashes of the heifer and lay them up without the 
camp in a clean place.' 

Again, upon the day of atonement both the goat for 
the people's sin-offering, and the bullock for the priest's 
sin-offering, the latter being the very case before us, 
were to be burned without the camp. But the person, 
who performed this service, is distinguished from the 
priest, as plainly as is the " fit man," by whose hand 
the scape-goat was to be sent into the wilderness. Lev. 
xvi. 26-28. 

Besides, it may be consoling to the Bishop to reflect, 
that the bodies of the animals sacrificed in the ordinary 
offerings were disposed of in a much simpler way. It 
was only the sin-offerings for the priests, and those 
offered for the united trespass of the whole congregation, 
which were to be burned without the camp. The latter 
would of course be rare, and as there were but three 
priests, the former could not be frequent. This peculiar 
character of these sacrifices the Bishop unaccountably 
forgot to mention, or else found it convenient not to do 
so ; leaving his readers to infer, as they naturally would, 
that he was speaking of the entire body of the multitu- 
dinous sacrifices which the ritual required. 

But we are not done with this matter yet. We have 
seen flaws enough in this indictment to quash it three 
times over ; but another flaw remains to be detected, 
which is equal in magnitude to either of the preceding. 
The charge of the ' unhistorical' rests in this instance 
upon the assumption tacitly made, that the encampment 
of Israel in the desert was one continuous camp, and 
that to carry anything forth " without the camp," 

3* 



58 THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP. 

repuired a journey of " six miles" from the centre to the 
outer circumference. Strenuously as Colenso resists the 
introduction of anything not written in so many terms 
in the text, provided it removes a difficulty, and consists 
with the veracity of Moses, he has no repugnance to its 
being done if it has an opposite effect. We might con- 
tent ourselves here with asking him to prove the con- 
tinuity of the camp, which is so essential to his argu- 
ment, and which he has taken for granted. And this 
not only without a particle of evidence, but in the face 
of the explicit statements of the sacred record. 

In Num. ii. comp.i. 52, 53, x. 14^28, the plan of Israel's 
encampment is minutely described. From this it appears 
that there were five distinct camps. One lay in the 
centre, and was formed by the Levites surrounding the 
tabernacle, ii. 17. Then four other camps, each em- 
bracing three tribes, were distributed around this 
toward the cardinal points of the compass. Now, the 
exterior of any one of these camps was ' without the 
camp.' Or what conceivable reason is there, ceremonial, 
sanitary, or of any other sort, why the ashes of the 
sacrifices might not be deposited in some ' clean place' 
outside of the Levitical camp ? but the person or persons 
entrusted with them, and with the offal which was to be 
burned ' where the ashes are to be poured out,' must 
traverse the unoccupied space between this and some other 
of the camps, traverse that camp also, and after com- 
pleting his " six miles," attend to what he might just as 
well have done at the very beginning of his journey. If 
this is the way, the Bishop teaches the Zulus economy of 
time and labor, we admire his wisdom and their patience. 

The relations of a later period may also throw light 
upon the meaning of this injunction. The entire en* 



THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP. 59 

campment of all the tribes corresponded to the land of 
Canaan as the residence of the whole people. The par- 
ticular camps which formed its subdivisions corresponded 
to the different localities in which the people dwelt 
together. But the ashes of the temple and the offal of 
the sacrifices were not to be carried beyond Jordan, and 
outside of the territory of Israel ; they were deposited 
or burned in the valley of the son of Hinnom, just with- 
out the city walls. So leprous persons were not banished 
beyond the limits of Palestine, but simply required to 
dwell apart, and outside of the town or city to which 
they belonged, 2 Kings vii. 3, xv. 5. As the prescriptions 
of the Pentateuch are the only ones bearing upon this 
subject, this shows how they were adapted by the people 
to their altered circumstances, and of course, what they 
understood the real meaning of these prescriptions to be. 
And if this interpretation be taken as authoritative, then 
to remove ' without the camp' means not outside of the 
territory occupied by the entire people ; but outside of 
that particular collection of habitations in which the 
thing to be removed happened to be. 

If the army of the Potomac consists of 100,000 men, it 
must on the Bishop's principles be a very formidable 
business to remove the offal and rubbish outside of their 
camp. He can calculate for us what the size of an en- 
campment must be, that can accommodate such a body 
of soldiers, and how far those in the centre must walk 
to reach its exterior limit. Before he enters, however, 
in real earnest upon the computation, we would advise 
him to inquire, whether they may not be encamped by 
regiments or divisions, and thus their labor be reduced, 
and his rendered unnecessary. 

But this is not all. The Levites were to encamp 



60 THE EXTENT OF THE CAMT. 

about the tabernacle bj families. The three chief fami- 
lies of the tribe were to pitch at its rear and on its two 
sides, Num. iii. 23, 29, So ; while Moses and Aaron and 
his sons were all who were to encamp in front of the 
tabernacle, ver. 38. So that in order to go from the 
tabernacle to the outside of the Levitical camp, it was 
necessary to pass the tents of these four w£n ! 

ISow, let us put Colenso's statements along side of the 
facts, and see what remains of his argument. The 
greater part of the body of a bullock, belonging not to 
the ordinary sacrifices but to a class rarely requiring to 
be offered, was to be carried not "on the back on foot," 
but conveyed in any manner that was thought proper, 
not by " Aaron himself or one of his sons," but by any 
person or persons they chose to employ, not " a distance 
of six miles," but past the tents of four men. And this 
is so ' huge ' a ' difficulty ' that the Mosaic origin and the 
credibility of the Pentateuch must be given up in conse- 
quence ! Which is * unhistorical ' now, Moses or Colenso ? 

But, adds the Bishop, 

" From the outside of this great camp, wood and water would have 
had to be fetched for all purposes." " And the ashes of the whole camp, 
with the rubbish and filth of every kind, for a population like that of 
London, would have had to be carried out in like manner through the 
midst of the crowded mass of people." 

Very well. There are cities with as large a popula- 
tion as that of London, and without its European 
conveniences, or its system of sewerage, as Peking for 
example, which continue to exist in the same place not 
only for one year, or for forty years, but for ages and 
centuries. Some how or other they manage to have 
their wants supplied, and their garbage removed. Could 
not Moses, trained at the court of Pharaoh, have directed 



THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP. 61 

such matters at least as well as the Chinese ? His ques- 
tion whether " such supplies of wood or water, for the 
wants of such a multitude as this, could have been found 
at all in the wilderness," properly belongs under another 
head, and will receive a sufficient answer, when we come 
to consider his strictures upon the subsistence of the 
sheep and cattle of the Israelites in the desert. See 
Chap. X. 

The objector proceeds : 

" They could not surely all have gone outside the camp for the necessi- 
ties of nature, as commanded in Deut. xxiii. 12-14." "We have to 
imagine half a million of men going out daily — the 22,000 Levites for a 
distance of six miles — to the suburbs for the common necessities of nature, 
The supposition involves, of course, an absurdity. But it is our duty to 
look plain facts in the face." 

What is to be thought of the honesty and truthfulness, 
not to say decency, of a man who can talk in this man- 
ner ? The " plain fact " is, that this regulation, as is mani- 
fest upon the very face of it, had nothing to do with the 
camp of the entire people. It is expressly confined to 
military expeditions. The paragraph begins (ver. 9), 
" When the host (the original is without the definite 
article, ttjnfc, a camp) goeth forth against thine enemies, 
then keep thee from every wicked thing." Detachments 
sent out to attack their foes are reminded of their sacred 
character, and all defilement or impurity in their camps 
is prohibited. The encampment of the entire people was, 
no doubt, under such ceremonial oversight and had such 
police arrangements, as the nature of the case permitted 
or required. But parties on military duty away from 
the main body are here put under special rules, whose 
wisdom, even in a sanitary point of view, is obvious. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER, 
COMPARED WITH THE POLL-TAX RAISED SIX MONTHS 
PREVIOUSLY. 

Under this head we are first treated to a precious 
specimen of the bishop's proficiency in Hebrew learning. 
The expression, ' shekel of the sanctuary,' first occur- 
ring in Ex. xxx. 13, and frequently thereafter is, as he 
remarks, rendered in the Septuagint ' the sacred shekel.' 
"But this," he goes on to say, " can hardly be the true 
meaning of the original wityri ipjL" And why not, pray ? 
The merest tyro in Hebrew could tell him, that this is 
quite as likely a meaning of the phrase as the other. 
The word niip occurs 466 times in the Old Testament. 
Of all these Gresenius, in his Thesaurus, finds but 23 
places, in which he judges that it means the sanctuary or 
one of its apartments, and five more in which it may 
mean it ; and in none of these does the phrase in ques- 
tion occur. On the contrary, he says of it, "it is used 
hundreds of times (sexcenties) in the genitive in place of 
an adjective ;" and he adduces, as phrases in which it 
occurs in this sense, " holy ground, holy place, holy hill, 
holy Spirit, holy name, holy day, holy sabbath, holy 
city, holy temple, holy oracle, holy flesh, holy bread 
{Eng. ver. hallowed), holy vessels, holy garments, holy 



NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FTEST MUSTEK. 63 

linen coat, holy crown, noly ointment, holy oil, sacked 
shekel, holy people, holy covenant." 

However, Colenso may be right and Gesenius mis- 
taken ; what then ? 

" The expression ' shekel of the sanctuary' could hardly have been used 
in this way, until there was a sanctuary in existence, or rather until the 
sanctuary had been some time in existence, and such a phrase had become 
familiar in the mouths of the people. Whereas here it is put into the 
mouth of Jehovah, speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, six or seven 
months before the tabernacle was made." 

Did the Israelites, then, pay no worship to the God of 
their fathers until the tabernacle was set up ? Had they 
no divine service previous to this, and no place set apart 
for its celebration ? Admitting that the term here used 
is to be translated ' sanctuary,' it involves no allusion to 
any structure and no implication of any. It means first, 
holiness in the abstract, then any thing holy, and finally, 
a holy place or sanctuary. The presence or the absence 
of an edifice has nothing to do with the appropriateness 
of the term. It would have been just as applicable to 
the spots where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob worshipped 
under the open sky, as to the tabernacle or the temple. 
But if a building were required, has the Bishop forgotten 
or did he intentionally overlook the circumstance that 
there is distinct mention (Ex. xxxiii. 7) of a provisional 
* tabernacle of the Congregation,' prior to the construc- 
tion of the one ordained on Sinai ? And besides when 
would be a fit time for instituting shekels of the sanctuary, 
supposing them not to have been known before, if not 
when contributions were making, and a uniform tribute 
was to be imposed to aid in its erection ? That this was 
the origin of the ' shekel of the sanctuary ' appears prob- 



64 NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER. 

able not only^ from its never having been mentioned 
before, but also from the fact that its weight is accurately 
defined in this passage as though it were something new ; 
( a shekel is twenty gerahs.' 

Ex. xxxviii. 25, 26 records the payment by all the 
people of the required tribute of half a shekel ; in Num. 
i. 1-46 all the people are numbered. The difficulty 
insisted upon here is " that the number of adult males 
should have been identically the same on the first occa- 
sion as it was half a year afterwards." 

Colenso himself supplies us with the true answer to 
this imaginary difficulty, though we must do him the 
justice to say it is without his intending it. Listen to 
him. 

" These words [viz. Ex. xxx. 11-13] direct that whenever a numbering 
of the people shall take place, eaeh one that is numbered shall pay a 
' ransom for his soul' of half a shekel. Now in Ex. xxxviii. 26 we read 
of such a tribute being paid, ' a bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel 
after the shekel of the Sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, 
from twenty years old and upward,' that is, the atonement-money is col- 
lected ; but nothing is there said of any census being taken. On the other 
hand, in Num. i. 1- 46, more than six months after the date of the former 
occasion, we have an account of a very formal numbering of the people, 
the result being given for each particular tribe, and the total number 
summed up at the end ; here the census is made, but there is no indication 
of any atonement-money being paid." 

A more satisfactorv solution could not be desired. 
Even if we were disposed to be critical, we would ask no 
other emendation of the above than first the restoration of 
the word when, for which whenever _has been quietly sub- 
stituted in the first sentence. The direction is not a 
general one, but has relation to a specific case. In no 
other instance in the Old Testament do we find this trib- 



NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER. 65 

ute connected with a numbering of the people. And 
secondly we would insert a note of interrogation after 
the ' six months ' of the last sentence. 

We have then in Ex. xxx. according to Colenso, a 
direction that a tribute and a census shall be taken 
together. In Ex. xxxviii. the tribute is collected but 
nothing said of the census. In Num. i. the census is 
taken but nothing said of the tribute. The fair inference 
from these premises unquestionably is that the two state- 
ments complete each other, or rather that the two acts 
are mutually supplementary, constituting together the 
performance of what had been before enjoined. As it is 
really one enumeration, therefore, it is not 'surprising' 
that the number given in both passages is ' identically the 
same.' 

The silver yielded by the tribute was mainly used Ex. 
xxxviii. 27, for casting the ' sockets ' or bases, on which 
the upright planks composing the frame of the tabernacle, 
and the pillars which supported the vail were to rest. 
These would be the last things needed before setting up 
the tabernacle. We are under no necessity, therefore, 
of assuming that the tribute was collected until near the 
first day of the first month in the second year of their 
departure out of Egypt, Ex. xl. 17. This month was 
largely taken up with the work of rearing the tabernacle, 
consecrating Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, set- 
ting the new ritual in operation and observing the 
annual passover. Then on the first day of the next 
month Num. i. 1, comes the order to 'take the sum of all 
the congregation.' In obedience to this, JSIoses and 
Aaron with their twelve assistants ver. 18, ' assembled all 
the congregation together on the first day of the second 
month, and they declared their pedigrees after their 



66 NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER. 

families, by the house of their fathers, according to the 
number of their names.' The simple meaning whereof 
we take to be, that they assembled the representatives of 
all the tribes, through whose agency the tribute had been 
already levied. They brought with them the tribute 
rolls, which it would be necessary to keep in order to 
certify that every one had paid. The names thus fur- 
nished were arranged according to their families and 
genealogies, and the entire number ascertained, which 
naturally enough corresponded with the number of half- 
shekels, which had been collected. 

Colenso, however, fails to draw the inference which 
the facts, as he states them, so naturally warrant, not to 
say imperatively require. After telling us in language 
already quoted that in Ex. xxxviii. 26, " the atonement- 
money is collected ; but nothing is there said of any cen- 
sus being taken," and in Num. i. 1-46, "the census is 
made, but there is no indication of any atonement-money 
being paid," he proceeds in the following remarkable 
manner. 

" The omission in each case might be considered, of course, as accidental, 
(!) it being supposed that in the first instance the numbering really took 
place, and in the second the tribute was paid, though neither circumstance 
is mentioned." 

And on this basis of what might be an accident, and 
this double supposition of what is not mentioned, Moses is 
convicted of saying something which his defamer regards 
as ' surprising.' If the Bishop had been so unmannerly 
as to charge not the Jewish legislator, but some living 
Englishman with uttering ' unhistorical ' statements, 
would such a shew of evidence as this to substantiate it, 
save him from judgment of damages in a slander suit 
before any court of the realm ? 



NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER. 67 

But suppose we overlook these possible accidents and 
unmentioned suppositions, and concede to Colenso that 
both tribute and census were taken twice over with an 
interval of six months. And we shall not ask, what in 
the world Moses meant by taking a second census so 
soon. We know our author too well to imagine that he 
would be troubled by such a question. The gross 
absurdity would only be a fresh proof that the narrative 
is ( unhistorical.' But waiving all this, what is the 
result? "It is surprising that the number of adult 
males should have been identically the same " on both 
occasions. 

We confess that if the fact were as Colenso alleges, it 
would not be so * surprising ' to us as it appears to be to 
him. It would be remarkable, certainly, but not incredi- 
ble nor unaccountable. And in order to justify it to our 
mind, we would not be obliged to resort to the hypothe- 
sis, that through God's marvellous favour, no one had 
died in the six months, nor that the deaths had been to 
a man balanced by those who in the interval came of age, 
nor that the Levites were included in the first enumera- 
tion, though not in the second, and consequently the 
increase had been just equal to the number of that tribe ; 
though it might puzzle him to disprove any one of 
these suppositions. But it is evident that we have only 
round numbers for the several tribes in Num. i. No 
units are given in any instance, but either fifties or even 
hundreds. Able expositors have hence been of the 
opinion that this tribute was not collected nor the enu- 
meration made by assessing or reckoning every indi- 
vidual singly, but that the process was facilitated by ba- 
sing it upon the decimal division of the host adopted some 
time before Ex. xviii. 25. The number of the people 



68 NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST MUSTER. 

could be estimated, and the tribute raised from the rulers 
of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties or of tens with com- 
parative readiness, and with sufficient accuracy. And if 
this were really the method adopted, it would leave a 
considerable margin for changes without these necessa- 
rily appearing in the enumeration. An army may have 
the same number of brigades, regiments, and companies, 
at the end of a campaign, that it had at the beginning. 
And if the changes in its ranks happened to be incon- 
siderable, an estimate in round numbers, where absolute 
accuracy is not insisted upon, would probably reveal no 
change at all. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 

The mention of ' tents,' Ex. xvi. 16, sets the bishop 
to calculating again. 

" Two millions of people would require 200,000 tents. How, then, did 
they acquire these ?" " Further, if they had had these tents, how could 
they have carried them?" "This would require 500,000 oxen," even if 
the tents were "of the lightest modern material, whereas the Hebrew 
tents, we must suppose, were made of skins, and were, therefore, much 
heavier." "Thus they would have needed for this purpose 200,000 
oxen." 

This is really too childish to merit a serious reply. 
But if a person has undertaken to wade through a bog, 
he must not stop for mud ; so we labour patiently on. 

In the first place, then, the children of Israel were, as 
the narrative shows, very inadequately supplied with 
tents. It is not necessary to go beyond the pages of 
Colenso to demonstrate this sufficiently for our present 
purpose. We make the following extracts : 

" In Lev. xxiii. 42, it is assigned as a reason for their ' dwelling in 
booths ' for seven days at the feast of tabernacles, ' that your generations 
may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I 
brought them out of the land of Egypt' It cannot be said that the word 
1 booths ' here means 'tents;' because the Hebrew word for a booth made 
of boughs and bushes is quite different from that for a tent. And besides, 



70 TI1E ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 

in the context of the passage in Leviticus, we have a description of the 
way in which these booths were to be made. . . . This seems to fix 
the meaning of the Hebrew word in this particular passage, and to show 
that it is used in its proper sense of booths." Again. " we are told that 
on the first day, when they went out of Egypt, they 'journeyed from 
Rameses to Succoth,' Ex. xih 37, where the name Succoth means booths." 

This, one would think, establishes clearly enough 
that large numbers of the people, and probably the 
vast majority of them, were destitute of tents, and 
were obliged to content themselves with such rude 
shelters as they could hastily construct from boughs 
of trees, bushes, or whatever came to hand. Such 
is not Colenso's inference, of course. " There is not," 
according to him, "the slightest indication in the 
story that they ever did live in booths." The mention 
of booths in these passages " conflicts strangely," in his 
judgment, with the allusion to tents in Ex. xvi. 16 ; but 
not so strangely, in our esteem, as his arguments and 
assertions do with the facts spread out upon his own 
pages. 

Secondly, there are abundant means of explaining 
how the children of Israel became possessed of such 
tents as they had. TTe are required to believe," says 
the bishop, "that they had tents;" and then he springs at 
once to his conclusion that they had 200,000. If he will 
but be more moderate in his estimate, we shall try to 
relieve his anxiety as to the ways and means of procur- 
ing them. 

1. The Israelites were largely engaged in tending 
flocks. This was their ancestral occupation, and the 
land of Goshen was assigned to them for the very pur- 
pose of allowing them to continue it under favourable 
circumstances and without offence to the Egyptians, Gen. 
xlvi. 32-34. Now, shepherds are in the Bible universally 



THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 71 

spoken of as dwelling in tents from the days of Jabal 
and the patriarchs, Gen. iv. 20, xiii. 5. Comp. 1 Chron. 
iv. 39-41, v. 9, 10, 2 Chron. xiv. 15, Cant. i. 8, Isaiah 
xxxviii. 12, Jer. vi. 3, xlix. 29. The only exception is 
doubtful expression in Zeph. ii. 6, where, if our trans" 
Jators have hit the true sense, we read of ' cottages for 
shepherds ; ' these, perhaps, may have been portable 
booths or sheds made of reeds, such as Diodorus* says 
were in use among Egyptian herdsmen down to his day. 
Ewaldf thinks they were huts mounted on wagons, like 
those of the wandering Scythians.^ 

2. The art of weaving was familiarly known in Egypt 
from the most ancient times. That the Israelites learned 
and practised it even in its finer and more elaborate 
applications, is apparent from the work of this descrip- 
tion which they wrought for the tabernacle, Ex. xxxv. 
25, and is further corroborated by 1 Chron. iv. 21. This 
would imply ability to make the coarse black hair-cloth 
which was used for tents in ancient, Cant. i. 5, as in 
modern times,§ even if this were not expressly stated, 
Ex. xxvi. 7, xxxv. 26, xxxvi. 14. In fact, we find 
mention of hair-cloth in the family of Jacob before the 
descent into Egypt, Gen. xxxvii. 34, comp. Kev. vi. 12, 
So that we do not see why " we must suppose " " the 
Hebrew tents were made of skins." 

3. The Israelites had ample time to make every neces- 
sary preparation for their journey, while Pharaoh was 

* Taj oiKfioeis tK Ttbv Kak&pwv KararrKevafoQai. Diodor. I. 43. 

f Kleine Hauschen oder Karren der Hirten. Ewald, Propheten I. 
p. 367. 

\ Scythae, 

Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos. Hor. Carm. III. 24, 10. 

§ Robinson's Biblical Researches, I. p. 485 ; in the original edition, 
II. p. 180. 



72 THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 

persisting in his refusal to let them go. But, says the 
Bishop, " had they provided this enormous number [of 
tents] in expectation of marching, when all their request 
was to be allowed to go ' for three days into the wilder- 
ness/Ex. v. 3?" 

Must we tell him that the chosen seed went down into 
Egypt only for a temporary sojourn, and that they were 
in constant expectation of being brought out of it to the 
land promised to their fathers ? The exodus had been 
divinely foretold to Abraham, Gen. xv. 14. The assur- 
ance of it was repeated to Jacob, as he was on his way 
into Egypt, Gen. xlvi. 4. He testified his faith in it as 
he was dying (xlviii. 21), and directed that he should be 
buried in Canaan, xlix. 29. Joseph had the same confi- 
dence, and exacted an oath of his brethren that his bones 
should be carried up from Egypt when God visited his 
people, 1. 24-26, Ex. xiii. 19. An explanation as old as 
the Targums (see Targ. on Cant. ii. 7) finds in 1 Chron. 
vii. 21 a premature attempt of the children of Ephraim 
to retake possession of Canaan. Moses, on his first arri- 
val in Egypt, summoned the elders of the people and 
informed them that the time for their deliverance had 
come, Ex. iii. 16 etc., iv. 29 etc. How any sane man 
can believe after this that the Israelites had no further 
expectation than that of going ' for three days into the 
wilderness' is very 'surprising.' In order to exhibit 
Pharaoh's obduracy and unreasonableness no other 
request was made of him. But to infer from this, that 
nothing more was intended, is on a par with the reason- 
ing which finds in God's command to Abraham to offer 
up his son an approval of human sacrifices. 

4. The first allusion to tents occurs Ex. xvi. 1, a full 
month after their departure out of Egypt. This would 



THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 73 

give additional time for their construction, and perhaps, 
also, for their purchase from the tribes of the desert. 

And as to the mode of carrying these tents, together 
with their other baggage, will the Bishop please to inform 
us how he knows that they had not as many oxen as his 
most extravagant estimate supposes? Even on that 
hypothesis, one hundred men as rich as Job might have 
undertaken it on contract, Job xlii. 12. Colenso surely 
need not boggle at their having even 200,000, when 
he argues himself upon the supposition that they had 
" two millions of sheep and oxen," pp. 119, 122. 

4 



CHAPTER VH 

THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 

Hitherto remarks upon the Hebrew text have been 
only incidental and by the way : we now come upon a 
chapter which is, ex professo, devoted to this subject. 
The former have proved so refreshing that we may well 
anticipate a choice display of learning and criticism. 
The passage to which we are indebted for so rare an 
entertainment is 

Ex. xiii. 18. The children of Israel went up harnessed 
(ta^an) out of the land of Egypt. 

The word here rendered ' harnessed,' is one of the few 
to be met with in the Hebrew Bible whose meaning and 
derivation are exceedingly doubtful, and which has 
accordingly been variously translated, from the old 
Greek interpreters downward. In such cases lexico- 
graphers have heretofore been under the delusion that 
one essential condition of a true rendering is that it must 
suit every passage in which the word occurs ; or, if this 
is impossible, different senses must be assumed, sufficient 
to meet the exigencies of every case. The labours of 
Colenso mark the opening of a new era. The meanings 
of difficult words are henceforth to be determined so that 
they will not suit the context in which they stand. It is 
scarcely possible to overestimate the results which might 



THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 75 

flow from the ingenious and persevering application of 
this hitherto undiscovered principle. Those critics, espe- 
cially, who are interested in proving the statements of 
an author "* unhistorical,' will find the invention particu- 
larly valuable. 

That we are not exalting the merits of this invention 
unduly we can satisfy our readers, by exhibiting its ope- 
ration in the present instance. We are first told that the 
word ti^»&n appears to mean ' armed,' or l in battle 
array.' Inasmuch as these two meanings are far from 
being coincident, we might ask which is to be preferred ? 
and why ? Does it mean that the people were drawn up 
in regular ranks, or that they had arms in their hands ? 
Without pausing, however, over such impertinent ques- 
tions, without even intimating that he is restricting the 
signification of the word beyond his own statement of it, 
our author proceeds on the assumption that it means 
6 armed,' and that only, adding immediately, " it is incon- 
ceivable, however, that these down-trodden, oppressed 
people should have been allowed by Pharaoh to possess 
arms." One would suppose from this that he was about 
correcting an opinion too hastily formed, and modifying 
a definition which he finds not to meet the exigencies of 
the case. But no ! the inappropriate meaning is left 
undisturbed. It does not prove Colenso wrong, but the 
narrative false. 

Gesenius defines the word (see his Lexicon translated 
by Prof. Robinson) fierce, active, eager, brave in battle. 
Would it not have been well to have stated his reasons, 
if he had any, for setting this definition aside ? At least 
would it not have been candid to have mentioned the 
fact, which is strangely omitted in his disquisition, that 
the standard lexicographer of the day had assigned 



Y6 THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 

these meanings to it? What has he to object to the 
representation that the children of Israel went out of the 
land of their bondage like a victorious army, laden with, 
spoils and with all the eager impetuosity, which, charac- 
terizes such a host ? 

In order to prove that the Israelites could not have 
had arms in their possession, he makes the following 
most unlucky allusion to the father of history. 

" The warriors formed a distinct caste in Egypt, as Herodotus tells us, 
ii. 165, 'being in number, when they are most numerous, 160,000, none 
of whom learn any mechanical art, but apply themselves wholly to military 
affairs.' " 

The unaccountable negligence of this quotation, to 
call it nothing worse, will appear in the first place from 
the fact, that Herodotus is there speaking of but one 
division of the " caste " of native warriors. In the very 
next paragraph he speaks of another division amounting 
to 250,000. In the second place, these native warriors 
did not exclude mercenaries, as he would have seen if he 
had read the second paragraph, before the one from 
which he quotes ; not to say that he might have learned 
it from the prophet Jeremiah xlvi. 21. Rawlinson in 
his Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 199, remarks that " the ancient 
kings in the glorious times of Egypt's great power had 
foreign auxiliaries ; they were levies composing part of 
the army, like those of the various nations which con- 
tributed to the expeditions of Xerxes and other Persian 
monarchs." Wilkinson in his Manners and Customs 
of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. p. 287, says, " Besides 
the native corps they had also mercenary troops, who 
were enrolled either from the nations in alliance with the 
Egyptians, or from those who had been conquered by 
them .... Strabo speaks of them as mercenaries ; and 



THE ISKAELITES ARMED. 77 

the million of men he mentions must have included these 
foreign auxiliaries." Can Colenso prove that Pharaoh 
did not make use of Israelites in his army as Great 
Britain does of Sepoys in India ? And besides, in spite 
of his sneer at the idea of ' borrowing ' arms, can he 
prove that the Egyptians did not supply the Israelites 
with these as well as other necessaries for their journey, 
in their urgency to have them go ? 

As the Bishop has been studying this subject " less 
than two years" (p. 12), he cannot be expected as yet to 
have read very extensively upon it. We would advise 
him, however, not to meddle much with Egyptian anti- 
quities. The less that is said about them by one who 
undertakes to prove the Pentateuch * unhistorical,' the 
better. These antiquities furnish too many evidences 
both of its truth and of its having been written in the 
midst of the scenes which it describes. 

Apart, however, from " the stubborn word ^4^TiJ* the 
bishop tells us " we must suppose that the whole body of 
600,000 warriors were armed, when they were numbered, 
Num. i. 3." Why so ? If he had ever heard of the 
American militia system before the war which now 
desolates this continent, he would have known that to be 
enrolled as * able to go forth to war,' and to be armed, 
are not convertible expressions. " And, besides, where 
did they get the armour with which about a month after 
[leaving Egypt] they fought the Amalekites, Ex. xvii. 
8-13?" We presume that a battle might be fought 
without the entire 600,000 being armed and engaging 
in it. 

But if " they had come to be possessed of arms, is it 
conceivable that 600,000 armed men, in the prime of 
life, would have cried out in panic terror ' sore afraid,' 



78 THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 

Ex. xiv. 10, when they saw that they were being pur- 
sued ?" TTe hope that by this time the ingenuity of the 
Bishop's device, and the marvellous success of his inven- 
tion will be apparent. The method, it will be seen, need 
not be confined to strict lexicography. The range of its 
applicability equals that of the philosopher's stone. It 
can be applied to anything whatever, and invariably 
with the same result. Tix your theory so that it shall 
not correspond with the facts, and then woe be to the 
facts ! Arrive at your conclusion from an ex parte state- 
ment of the case ; after this has been settled, introduce 
the considerations which are incompatible with it, and 
the falsity of the narrative follows of course. It would 
be in vain to expect the Bishop to reconsider his argu- 
ment on account of this or any other difficulty, that may 
be in the way. That is Moses' concern, not his. All 
that remains for us, is timidlv to suggest that the unex- 
pected appearance of Pharaoh's chariots might spread 
terror in an undisciplined throng, encumbered as the 
Israelites were, even if they had arms in their hands, as 
one of the formidable iron-clads of modern times might 
drive any number of infantry beyond the reach of its 
death-dealing guns. Comp. Judg. iv. 3. 

The philological argument of this chapter, then, 
amounts to this. The word -"'.r*pn means either armed 
or in battle array (though Gesenius defines it differently) ; 
therefore the Israelites had arms ; therefore they were all 
armed. But they could not have been all armed. There- 
fore the narrative is untrue. The question involuntarily 
forces itself upon us, Is not a residence among the Zulus 
unfavourable to the development of the understanding ? 

The remarks and calculations, with which we are fur- 
ther favoured, respecting the alternate hypothesis that the 



THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 79 

word ta'ro&ri is radically connected with the numeraire, 
and that it consequently means " five in a rank," present 
abundant matter for comment. As they are of no con- 
sequence to the argument, however, we pass them by, 
simply observing that, upon like principles, a garrison 
decimated by disease must have lost precisely one-tenth, 
and winter-quarters must mean the fourth part of some- 
thing. 

How if the word has the sense, which Cocceius attri- 
butes to it, of numbered or belonging to a numbered host ? 
It would then be equivalent to the Greek cre/xtfa^w, which 
denotes strictly (see Liddell and Scott) to count on five 
fingers, or count by fives, then generally to count. And 
the Latin numeri is used as a military term for a division 
of an army. Or how, if & h ip>pn means, what Gresenius 
says it would, if it were referred to the numeral five, 
quinquepartitum, or consisting of five parts, the centre, 
the two wings, and the front and rear guard, and hence 
obtains the more general sense in battle array? What 
would then become of his calculation that "they must 
have formed a column sixty-eight miles long, and it 
would have taken several days to have started them all 
off, instead of their going out all together that self- same 
day?" 



CHAPTER YIH. 

THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 

The next chapter, headed as above, is so transparent 
and glaring a misrepresentation, that no one can be 
deceived b j it, and we cannot persuade ourselves to delay 
upon it. The whole seeming force of it rests upon the 
assumption and the assertion, directly in the face of the 
plain statements of the narrative, that the first instruc- 
tions to the children of Israel respecting the passover 
were given to them on the day that it was to be killed, 
and that the ' borrowing ' from the Egyptians was done 
" at a moment's notice." 

It is true that they were directed, Ex. xii. 3, to take 
the lamb on the tenth day of the month, and, ver. 6, to 
keep it up until the fourteenth, and then kill it. But this, 
instead of showing that they had at least four days' notice, 
only makes "the story" "perplexing and contradictory!" 
For does not the Lord say, in the very same connection, 
ver. 12, 'I will pass through the land of Egypt this 
night ' ? This is further fortified by an appeal to the 
original Hebrew ; " the expression is distinctly i-fln, 
this, not awn, that." We fear that the Bishop and his 
Hebrew dictionary are comparative strangers to each 
other ; how else could he have overlooked the fact, that 
one of the meanings of iit is that which has just been men- 



THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 81 

tioned (Gesen. sub verbo), a sense in which it is frequently 
rendered ' the same ' in the common English version, e. g. 
Gen. vii. 11, 13, Ex. xix. 1. { This night,' according to 
Hebrew usage, means the night spoken of immediately 
before, and not necessarily the one succeeding the mo- 
ment of speaking. If Colenso continues his investiga- 
tions, we expect to hear of a much more serious difficulty 
than this in Deut. ix. 1. Moses there says to Israel, 
1 Thou art to pass over Jordan this day? We must 
accordingly assume that all that follows to the end of the 
book, including the death of Moses and the thirty days 
mourning for him, took place within the next twelve 
hours. - 

The allegation that the ' borrowing 7 was performed 
"at a moment's notice," is, if possible, yet more inex- 
cusable. The people were not only told what to do, at 
least four days beforehand, Ex. xi. 2, but they were 
spoken to on the subject when Moses first returned to 
Egypt, Ex. iii. 21, 22, iv. 30. 

The "second notice, to start," given "at midnight," i§ 
a fabrication of Colenso's own. The people had been 
instructed how to act long before ; and the urgency of 
the Egyptians to send them out of the country, Ex. xii. 
33, left them no option. 

All the computations of the chapter about sheep, and 
territory, and population, and the time required to circu^ 
late notices, however interesting in themselves, are 
nothing to the purpose, for which they are alleged, of 
proving the statements of -Moses self-contradictory or 
incredible. There is a Hebrew criticism embedded in, 
this discussion, however, which, whether just or not, is 
of so striking a nature, that it would be unpardonable 
not to mention it. Jehovah was to "stride across (frtiB) 

4* 



82 THE INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVEB. 

the threshold, and protect the house from the angel of 
death." 'Passover,' then, is a misnomer; the festival 
should be called Stride-over. We commend this to the 
careful consideration of the children of Abraham. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

CHAPTEE IX. 

THE MAECH OUT OF EGYPT. 

Under this caption we are first presented with a 
re-hash of the unfounded assumptions of the preceding 
chapter respecting the suddenness of the call to leave 
Egypt. Then follow a few more of the same sort. After 
being summoned "suddenly at midnight," the "two mil- 
lions" of Israelites "come in from all parts of the land 
of Goshen to Eameses," and were then " started again 
from Barneses that very same day, and marched on to 
Succoth." Finally, "on the third day, they turned aside 
and ' encamped by the sea.' Ex. xiv. 2." 

In proof that they came in from Goshen to Eameses 
just, as it would seem, for the sake of marching back 
again, he appeals to Ex. xii. 37 — ' And the children of 
Israel journeyed from Eameses to Succoth, about six 
hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside chil- 
dren.' 

The following view of the case which Colenso himself 
quotes from Kurtz, is intrinsically so probable, that it 
must commend itself, we think, to every sober-minded 
person, and show both the needlessness and inadmissibility 
of the preceding hypothesis. Kurtz says, " Eameses was 
the capital of the province. There, no doubt, Moses and 
Aaron were residing. The procession started thence ; 



84: THE MAJtCH OUT OF EGYPT. 

and after the main body had set out, smaller parties came 
from all directions, as speedily as possible, and joined it 
at the point of the road nearest to their own dwellings." 

Suppose, however, that we allow all the marching and 
countermarching which the Bishop wishes to foist into 
the narrative, how would this affect the credit of the 
sacred historian ? The objector wishes us to believe that 
the time into which this was crowded was too limited for 
its performance. After reaching Eameses they were fifty 
or sixty miles from the sea, and this could not be trav- 
ersed by such an immense host against ' the third day.' 

But this ' third day ' is a pure figment ; there is 
nothing said about it in Exodus. Moses does not tell 
us how long it took the people to reach the Eed Sea. 
He mentions indeed that they went " from Eameses to 
Succoth, from Succoth to Etham, and from Etham to the 
Eed Sea." But it is nowhere stated that they were only 
a day in passing from one of these points to that next in 
order. And that this is not his meaning appears from 
the fact that if their marches after crossing the Eed Sea, 
Ex. xv. 22-xvi. 1, be interpreted in the same way, 
they ought to have reached the wilderness of Sin in ten 
days, whereas a month was consumed in getting there. 

And here the Bishop is guilty of downright dishonesty 
in garbling a quotation from Kurtz to suit his purposes. 
Professing to give the views of that eminent scholar, he 
carefully conceals from his readers the opinion which 
Kurtz strenuously maintains and in our judgment incon- 
trovertibly establishes, that the distance from one station 
or place of encampment to another may as naturally be 
several days' journey as one, compare Num. xxxiii. 8. 
This is kept back not only by omitting what Kurtz says 
on that point, but by sundering the quotations, which 



THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 85 

are made, from their true connection so as to produce a 
false impression of their meaning, by transposing a sen- 
tence for the same purpose, and more fraudulently still, 
by omitting the following sentence from what purports 
to be a connected quotation, viz. "The following con- 
siderations also serve to show, that the Israelites must 
necessarily have spent more than three days on their march 
from Eameses to their encampment by the sea." This 
suggestion would be fatal to all his quibbling objections. 
And as there was no reply that could be made to it, he 
chose an easy but dishonourable method of ridding him- 
self of all perplexity. What would the " simple-minded 
but intelligent" Zulus say to such conduct as this on 
the part of their bishop ? If he has, as he claims (p. 35), 
" renounced the hidden things of dishonesty " it must be 
in a sense widely different from that in which the apostle 
intended the phrase. 

The question raised at the close of this chapter as to 
the subsistence of the people and their flocks upon the 
march properly belongs to the chapter next ensuing. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES IN THE 

DESERT. 

" The people, we are told, were supplied with manna. 
But there was no miraculous provision of food for the 
herds and flocks." How, then, did the latter gather sub- 
sistence in that inhospitable wilderness ? 

It is so obvious that the vast multitude of men and 
animals, which went out of Egypt with Moses, could not 
have been supported in the desert for forty years by 
mere natural means, that this has always been a great 
stumbling-block to those who insist upon measuring the 
facts of the Bible by the standard of ordinary history. 
But if any think to escape this difficulty by denying the 
truth of the facts, they will only involve themselves in 
others which are still more insurmountable. 

All Jewish history is a fable, if the Exodus be untrue. 
Not to insist upon the corroborations from profane his- 
torians, which would thus be unaccounted for, the 
Egyptian Manetho, Tacitus, Justin, and others, every- 
thing in Judaism is built upon it, and presupposes it. 
How did such a tradition originate, or ever gain preva- 
lence, if it were false ? There was nothing in it to gratify 
national vanity, but everything to humiliate it, and to 
shock their prejudices. That their fathers had been in 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 87 

bondage to the uncircumcised Egyptians, — that they had 
grown to be a nation, not on the sacred soil of Palestine, 
but in the profane land of idolaters — that the most solemn 
revelations of Jehovah, including the fundamental law 
of their nation, were given not at Jerusalem, but in a 
desert two hundred miles away, — that a whole generation 
of their fathers had been so faithless as to be doomed to 
die in the desert, and even the great lawgiver himself, 
and the first high priest had been debarred from entering 
the holy land ; is it conceivable that these were inventions 
of the Jewish mind, or that they ever could have entered 
into the faith of the nation if they were not undeniable 
facts ? 

Moreover, these are not vague uncertain traditions, 
which were spoken of doubtfully, or stated variously at 
different times and places, though even if this were the 
case we would still be obliged to assume a historical 
basis to account satisfactorily for their origin. But in all 
that multitude of allusions to the subject or declarations 
respecting it, which abound throughout the Old Testa- 
ment, there is no hesitation and no diversity. The same 
story is told, or is implied everywhere. There can be 
no question that it expresses the universal faith of the 
Israelitish people. 

But further, when did this story originate and under 
what circumstances ? We have in the first place, in the 
Pentateuch, a contemporaneous history of the march 
from Egypt to Canaan. For though Colenso may scoff 
and deride its claims, these are too firmly established to 
be shaken. But besides this, we can trace it through the 
entire subsequent literature of the Hebrews from first to 
last. Prophets, psalmists, historians, speak of it as well 
known and undeniable. The book of Joshua belonging 



88 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

to the age next succeeding that of Moses, and written by 
one who participated in the miraculous crossing of the 
Jordan, Josh. v. 1, lends it the most unequivocal sanction 
and is in fact inexplicable on every page without it. Or 
if Colenso could succeed in sweeping away both Joshua 
and the Pentateuch by the potent wand of his arithmeti- 
cal criticism, Judges would utter its testimony, ii. 1, et 
passim. Even unbelieving critics do not venture to 
deny the antiquity and originality of the song of Debo- 
rah, and that makes express mention of the supernatural 
revelation at Sinai, Judg. v. 5, which, implies and sanc- 
tions all the rest. 

But there is more to be explained than the existence 
of written testimonies of too early a date and too near 
the time of the event, to admit of the growth of an 
unfounded tradition, even if such, a tradition could have 
originated in the Jewish mind after any lapse of time, or 
if such uniformity of statement on the part of such a 
multitude of voices could be accounted for otherwise 
than by the supposition of the truth of what is thus 
attested. The facts of Jewish, history presuppose what 
the Pentateuch, records, and are susceptible of no other 
solution. The fragments of aboriginal tribes occupying 
portions of Canaan along with Israel, some of them, as 
the Philistines, even long disputing the preeminence with 
them, show that Israel had intruded themselves from 
abroad and thrust out the primitive possessors of the 
soil. The peculiar position of the tribe of Levi, dispersed 
among the other tribes, and owning no inheritance of its 
own, implies its separation to sacerdotal service before 
Canaan had been entered. That the sanctuary of God 
was a tent or tabernacle prior to the erection of Solomon's 
temple implies the migratory sojourn in the wilderness. 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 89 

And not only facts like these, which cannot be denied 
or explained away, if all history is not to be dissolved 
into a mere illusion, but the permanent institutions of 
Israel bear the ineffaceable impress of the exodus. The 
annual passover and the feast of tabernacles were public 
stated commemorations of the coming out of Egypt and 
the abode in the wilderness. These were instituted at 
the time when the events themselves took place,' and 
were perpetuated ever since, fathers to sons explaining 
the meaning of the observance. The pot of manna and 
Aaron's rod that budded were preserved in the sanctuary, 
and the brazen serpent was in existence until the days 
of Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii. 4. And then, there is the 
ceremonial, which, with all its multitudinous prescrip- 
tions, has nevertheless such a unity of purpose and of 
idea, as shows that it is no conglomerate -made up of the 
slow accretions of ages, and of heterogeneous materials 
gathered from diverse quarters, but is a consistent sys- 
tem, the work of one mind, and introduced in its com- 
pleteness. Now, this points to the wilderness as the 
place of its origin, by numerous injunctions, which enter 
as constituent parts into the ceremonial system, and yet 
which derive their form from the circumstances of that 
period, e. g. the minute specifications respecting the 
transportation of the tabernacle and its furniture, Num. 
iv. 5 etc., the burning of parts of certain sacrifices 
without the camp, Lev. iv. 12, the removal of lepers 
without the camp, Lev. xiii. 46. And still further, the 
ceremonial contains not a few undoubted Egyptian ele- 
ments. These are not so numerous nor so pervading as 
Spencer maintained in the interest of rationalism, and 
yet they are sufficient to show beyond question that the 
people must have stood in an intimate relation to 



90 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

Egypt at the time when this system was given to 
them. 

This is no prejudice to the inspiration of Moses, or to 
the divinity of the law given through him. It neither 
disproves nor degrades the inspiration of the apostles 
that they taught heavenly truths to the world in the lan- 
guage of Greece. Nor are the sublime revelations of 
Ezekiel and of Daniel less truly from God, because 
clothed in the garb of symbols suggested or modified by 
the colossal and grotesque forms perpetually before their 
eyes in Babylonia. With the symbolical language of 
Egypt both Moses and the people were familiar. The 
religion of Egypt, with its absurd abominations, the 
lawgiver utterly discards. But in setting forth the pure 
and heavenly truths of the religion of the true God, he 
draws upon symbols with which they were already 
acquainted, purging them from every heathenish and 
false association, and bringing them into such connections 
that they aptly represent precisely what he would have 
them teach. It is just as the apostles adopted words 
which in the mouths of pagan Greeks had low and 
unworthy senses, and infused into them the spirit of the 
Christian revelation, thus regenerating the language 
while they used it. And as the idiom of the !New Tes- 
tament affords an index to the time, the country, and the 
circumstances in which it was written, so the idiom of 
the ceremonial of Moses, if we may so speak, the cha- 
racter and affinities of the symbols which he employs, 
show it to have come from a man familiar with Egyptian 
institutions, and to have been introduced into Israel at a 
period when the people possessed such a familiarity like- 
wise. 

These considerations thus hastily hinted at, and which 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 91 

might be corroborated and expanded indefinitely, show 
beyond a doubt that the great facts of the exodus are 
true. Colenso may cavil and calculate till doomsday, 
but he cannot unsettle what is thus woven into the very 
texture of everything relating to the Israelitish people, 
their history, their literature, and their institutions. 
Here are indisputable facts to be accounted for, which no 
imposture could have effected and which no mystification 
can obscure. We afiirm unhesitatingly that no hypo- 
thesis can be framed which will satisfactorily account for 
them, but that of the truth of the narrative, marvellous 
as it may be, which is given by Moses. And hence, as 
Colenso acknowledges, even a man like Ewald, prover- 
bial in Germany itself for stopping at no extravagance 
of criticism and no wildness of hypothesis, feels com- 
pelled to confess, if the whole history of Israel is not to 
be frittered away, that the fact of the exodus and of the 
sojourn in the wilderness is undeniably true. 

"Ewald certainly asserts this," viz. that "the general truth of the 
■wanderings in the wilderness is an essential preliminary to the whole 
of the subsequent history of Israel;" "but I cannot find any place 
where he shows it. The story of the Exodus is no doubt an ' essential 
preliminary' to certain parts of the subsequent history of Israel as 
recorded, but not to the whole of it. If that story be shown to be untrue, 
those parts may also have to be abandoned as untrue, but not the whole 
Jewish history." 

We would like to have the Bishop specify which 
these ' certain parts ' of the history are that he would be 
willing to give up for the sake of getting rid of the 
Exodus. We fancy there would be very little left. He 
might as well undertake to explain American history on 
the hypothesis that this country was not settled from 
Europe. 



92 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

The fact must be accepted, therefore, with all its diffi- 
culties. This vast multitude of men and animals did 
march into the desert, and continued there for forty years. 
How did they subsist ? 

We reply, in the first place, that the natural produc- 
tions of the region, in which they were, would go a cer- 
tain length toward their support. This feature of the 
case has not always received its due share of attention. 
The miracle, which must be admitted in any event, is so 
stupendous and long-continued, that it seems to be 
scarcely enhanced to an appreciable extent by leaving all 
ordinary supplies out of the account. And, further, the 
inspired historian very properly exalts the miraculous 
side of the case, which was so out of proportion to what 
was merely natural, and which was the aspect with which 
he was chiefly concerned, to special and almost exclusive 
prominence. Not that he exaggerates the miracle, or 
studiously conceals the other available means of subsist- 
ence ; but he lays no stress upon the latter. And hence 
the hints and indications which he does give upon the 
subject have so frequently — perhaps we might say com- 
monly — been overlooked; e. g. the mention of date palms, 
Ex. xv. 27, the nourishment obtained from the flocks 
which they are said to have had with them, and the pur- 
chase of food and drink for themselves and their cattle, 
Num. xx. 19, Deut. ii. 6, 28. 

The tendency of late, -among students of this portion 
of the sacred record, has, however, been toward the 
opposite extreme of under-estimating the miracle and 
exalting unduly the natural resources of the region. And 
this for a triple reason ; first, the general tendency in one 
extreme of opinion to generate its opposite ; secondly, 
the interest of unbelief, which, unable to rid itself of the 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 93 

fact of the exodus, sought to explain it upon a natural 
basis ; and thirdly, the pardonable enthusiasm of those 
who, in their recent explorations of this region, have added 
so much to our knowledge of its character, and brought to 
light so much that was unexpected, that it is not surpris- 
ing if they attribute a greater weight to their discoveries 
than a cooler judgment will be disposed to allow. If, 
therefore, we wish to arrive at a correct impression of the 
real state of the case, we must carefully avoid both 
extremes, and diligently examine whatever sources of 
information lie within our reach. 

Now, the fact is, that while the general features of the 
Sinaitic desert are, as described in the long pages of cita- 
tions made by Colenso, those of aridity, barrenness, and 
desolation, there are, nevertheless, exceptions to this in 
verdant oases and fertile wadys scattered here and there.* 

* We clip from the pages of Colenso the following quotations to show 
the possibilities of culture in this desert. The first is taken from Stanley's 
Sinai and Palestine, p. 27 of the American edition : 

" ' How much may be done by a careful use of such water and such soil 
as the desert supplies, may be seen by the only two spots, to which, now, 
a diligent and provident attention is paid, namely, the gardens at the 
Wells of Moses, under the care of the French and English agents from 
Suez, and the gardens in the valleys of Jebel Musa, under the care of the 
Greek monks of the convent of St. Catherine. Even so late as the seven- 
teenth century, if we may trust the expression of Monconys, the Wady- 
er-Rahah, in front of the convent, now entirely bare, was " a vast green 
plain," wne grande champagne verte.' 1 " 

The quotation marks in the printed copy of Colenso are here incorrect. 
Stanley himself quotes the words " a vast green plain." 

The second is from Shaw, Travels to the Holy Land, ch. ii. : — 

" ' Though nothing that can properly be called soil is to be found in these 
parts of Arabia, these monks have, in a long process of time, covered over 
with dung and the sweepings of their convent near four acres of these 
naked rocks, which produce as good cabbages, salads, roots, and all kinds 
of pot-herbs, as any soil and climate whatsoever. They have likewise 



94: THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

These suffice to sustain a sparse population at the pre- 
sent day. The roving tribes which frequent the desert 
are very inconsiderable, it is true, as compared with the 
immense host of the Israelites ; still they show that the 
region is not absolutely destitute of vegetation. Bitter,* 
(p. 709,) after describing the district in the immediate 
vicinity of Sinai, adds: 

" We adduce these data here just to confirm anew, what has been so 
often proved already, that it is only our ignorance which creates such great 
deserts, such unpeopled solitudes, such void spaces in the earth ; these are 
constantly vanishing more and more from the Sahara and the so-called 
absolute deserts of Arabia and Petrea, as they have done from the midst 
of the primeval forests of America (see Stevens, Catherwood, etc.), with 
every serious advance of investigation into these regions." 

But further, there are abundant indications that this 
desert once supported a much larger population than at 
present, just as the same is the case with Palestine itself; 
and the causes of this increased sterility in modern times 
can, in a measure, be pointed out. On this subject, we 
may be indulged with a somewhat extended quotation 
from Bitter, pp. 926, 927, the great authority on all 
questions of physical geography. 

"We have already, above, referred to the former natural condition of 
things in this country, and their relations, which must have been essen- 
tially different in their effects from those of the present. So the former 

raised apple, pear, plum, almond, and olive trees, not only in great num- 
bers, but also of excellent kinds. Their grasses also are not inferior, either 
in size or flavour, to any whatsoever. Thus this little garden demonstrates 
how far an indefatigable industry may prevail over nature.' " 

Now whatever the Bishop may choose to say about u little gardens," 
" a few favoured spots," " great care and industry," and " a long process 
of time," such facts as the above show that the desolation is not absolute, 
nor is it universally irredeemable. 

* This and the following reference to Bitter have respect to Theil xiv. 
of his Erdkunde, which treats of the Peninsula of Sinai. 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 95 

abundance of vegetation,* especially in the larger and more numerous 
growth of trees, with the vanishing of which the number of smaller plants 
must diminish likewise. So the greater abundance of various articles of 
food, of which the people of Israel in their time might make use. So the 
more universal and thorough cultivation of the soil, which reveals itself in 
the monumental periods of the most ancient Egyptians, their mining ope- 
rations and settlements, as well as in the Christian period by episcopal 
foundations and the remains, which are scattered everywhere, of cloisters, 
hermitages, walls, gardens, fields, and wells. So also, finally, in the possi- 
bility of a better improvement of the temporary abundance of water in the 
wadys as well as of the rain, showers of which are not uncommon, but 
which could only be preserved by industry and artificial means for more 
unfruitful seasons of the year, as this is the case in other districts under 
the same parallel of latitude. 

" These relations, taken together and supported by the numerous inscrip- 
tions on Sinai and Serbal, along with those in Wady Mokatteb and in a 
hundred other ravines, and those on the tops of rocks and mountains, which 
are at present found in wild solitude and perfect neglect, inscribed by 
human hands in all directions through the entire central group of moun- 
tains, show that more numerous populations could subsist here, and actu- 
ally did subsist, even if we did not likewise know that before the passage 
of Israel, four different nationalities, the sons of Amalek, Midian, and Ish- 
mael, and on the east the Edomites, had their seats here, and maintained 
them, whose number we could not estimate to be trifling, even if we were 
to reduce them to a minimum, and make them to have been of the smallest 
dimensions of modern Arab tribes. 

" We agree, therefore, perfectly with the critical historian Ewald, when he 
says, that this peninsula could support far more people then than at present 
— amidst great destitutions, to be sure, which are frequently spoken of in 
the reminiscences of the people, and which also served a purpose in trying 
them ; but yet so that their existence need not have been endangered 
thereby. From the trifling number of its present negligent population, no 
conclusion surely can be drawn with certainty as to its former condition, 
any more than this can be done in the case of many other regions of the 
world — e. g. Sogdiana, etc. — which were once in a glorious state of culti 
vation, but which are now, in like manner, desolated by human indolence." 



* Under this and each of the particulars which follow, Bitter refers 
back to detailed descriptions previously given in his work, confirming and 
elucidating the summary statement here made. 



96 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

Colenso repeats Stanley's allusion in his Sinai and 
Palestine to this very passage of Bitter, as containing a 
good summing up of the indications that the mountains 
of Sinai were once "able to furnish greater resources 
than at present." And without giving himself the trou- 
ble to look up the passage, as it would appear, he dis- 
misses it in the following characteristic and flippant 
manner. " Whatever they may be, they cannot do 
away with the plain language of the Bible already quoted, 
which shows that the general character of the desert 
was as desolate and barren then as now." While pay- 
ing all due respect to such an unwonted instance of 
reverence for "the plain language of the Bible," as to 
adhere to it unshrinkingly, without caring even to listen 
to what modern investigation can adduce, we venture to 
doubt whether its meaning is as he alleges. 

The following are the passages, with the comments, 
italics, and all, which are relied upon to prove that the 
country traversed by the Israelites has undergone no 

" material change from that time to this. It is described as beirjg then 
what it is now, a ' desert land,' a 'waste howling wilderness,' Deut. xxxii. 
10. ' Why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this 
wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there ? And wherefore have 
ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring.us in unto this evil place ? 
It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates ; neither is 
there any water to drink.' Num. xx. 4, 5. From this passage it appears 
also that the water from the rock did not follow them, as some have sup- 
posed. ' Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God .... who led 
thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery ser- 
pents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water' Deut. viii. 15. 
' Neither said they, Where is the Lord that brought us up out of the land 
of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and 
of pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through a 
land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?' Jer. ii. 6." 

All this proves that the region was a desert then. 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 97 

And it is a desert now. But of its comparative sterility 
then and now, the text says nothing. No accumulation 
of epithets could express too strongly how utterly inca- 
pable such a region was without miraculous interference 
of affording the needed supplies for so vast a multitude 
during so many years. But so far from establishing an 
absolute destitution of all vegetation, the expressions 
employed above prove rather the reverse. The original 
word for ' wilderness ' "is}??, means properly pasture- 
land, a tract of country, which is unfit for cultivation, 
but where cattle are driven ; this Colenso appears to 
have forgotten here, though he remembers it on p. 189, 
where he has an object to serve by it. 'Howling' 
implies the presence of wild beasts, which of course must 
find something to live upon. And it is obvious that the 
language of the prophet, ' a land that no man passed 
through, and where no man dwelt,' is simply intended as 
a strong description of the dreary and inhospitable 
nature of the region, and not as a categorical assertion 
that not a single individual had ever passed through it, 
or dwelt in it, as Colenso seems to understand it. 
Because the narrative of Moses makes it sufficiently plain 
that other persons had been in it before, and were in it 
then. 

Now as to the subsistence of the cattle, from which the 
Bishop draws his chief objection, what is to prevent their 
feeding in the various wadys of the peninsula ? That 
pasturage was to be found in the vicinity of Sinai is 
expressly declared Ex. xxxiv. 3, and is implied in Moses 
leading his father-in-law's flocks to that very place, Ex. 
iii. 1. Winer, whom none can charge with attaching 
undue weight to the authority of Scripture, says* with 

* Biblisches Realworterbuch, vol. II. p. 708. Art. Wusle Arabische. 

5 



98 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

an eye to the evidences already reviewed of a higher 
measure of fertility in this region in former times than at 
present : " The flocks enjoying a change of pasture 
could not easily suffer for want of food." 

But Colenso is not willing to allow them this change 
of pasture. 

" It cannot be supposed, as some have suggested, that the flocks and 
herds were scattered far and wide, during the sojourn of the people in the 
wilderness, and so were able the more easily to find pasture. The story 
says nothing, and implies nothing, whatever of this ; but, as far as it 
proves anything, it proves the contrary, since we find the whole body of 
the people together, on all occasions specified in the history. If, indeed, 
they had been so dispersed, they would surely have required to be guarded, 
by large bodies of armed men, from the attacks of the Amalekites, Midian- 
ites, and others. 

" It seems to be clearly implied in Num. ix. 17-23 that they travelled 
all together, and were not separated into different bodies." 

This is sheer trifling. Moses does not profess to give 
any account of the manner in which the cattle were 
driven. It might be supposed that the cattle of the 
patriarchs were always in the vicinity of their residence, 
and yet we incidentally learn upon one occasion that 
Jacob's flocks were feeding sixty miles from home, Gen. 
xxxvii. 17. 

We have no idea, however, that the subsistence of 
Israel's flocks in the wilderness is wholly explicable 
from natural causes, any more than we have that the 
subsistence of the people themselves can be so explained. 
It is true that nothing is expressly said of a miraculous 
provision being made for the flocks as was made for the 
people by the gift of manna. But we do not accept the 
dictum that no miracles are to be assumed but such as 
are expressly mentioned in the sacred history. Our 
Saviour's public ministry abounded in miracles, so that 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 99 

the evangelist tells us that the world itself could not con- 
tain the books which would have to be written to 
describe them all, John xxi. 25. And yet only a few of 
these mighty works were narrated by way of specimen. 

It was so doubtless at the time of the exodus. A few 
characteristic specimens only are related, while numbers 
are left untold. The whole period was one of superna- 
tural guidance, protection, and supply, Deut. xxxii. 10. 
Divine interference to whatever extent the necessities of 
Israel's position demanded was the rule, not the excep- 
tion. The idea that God would provide by miracle for 
the wants of Israel, even preserve their shoes and clothes 
from waxing old, Deut. xxix. 5, and yet fail to supply 
their cattle with what was absolutely necessary for their 
support, is like Colenso's idea that if God arrested the 
earth's rotation at the prayer of Joshua, " every human 
being and animal would be dashed to pieces in a moment, 
and a mighty deluge overwhelm the earth." (p. 9.) 

The fact that it is not in so many terms declared that 
a miracle was wrought, is no evidence against it, if state- 
ments are made and facts recorded, which necessarily 
imply a miracle. In the narrative of raising Jairus' 
daughter, it is simply said, Mat. ix. 25, that Jesus ' went 
in and took her by the hand and the maid arose.' The 
evangelist does not say that it was a miracle. He simply 
records the fact that the dead was recovered by a touch, 
and suffers his readers to draw their own inferences. 
When it is said that Moses passed forty days and forty 
nights without eating or drinking, Ex. xxxiv. 28, and the 
same thing is likewise recorded of Elijah, 1 Kin. xix. 8, 
and of our Lord, Mat. iv. 2, must we look to the ordinary 
laws of physiology for an explanation, because the fact 
is not expressly declared to have been miraculous ? 



100 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 

The sacred history records that Israel took an imnieDse 
number of flocks and herds into the wilderness, that they 
were sustained there and brought safely out again. Now 
the more successful Colenso is in establishing that this 
vast multitude of animals could not have found subsist- 
ence by natural means, the more clearly he proves that 
there must have been some divine interposition in the 
case. In what form this interposition was manifested 
we cannot tell. All we know is that the events recorded 
did take place ; and if they could not have occurred 
without a miracle, then there must have been a miracle. 
It may have been in the same way that the widow's 
handful of meal was made to sustain her family and 
Elijah, till Grod sent rain upon the earth, and as the five 
loaves and two fishes were made to feed five thousand 
men. Or it may have been by converting the wilder- 
ness into a fruitful field, and a dry land into springs of 
water. 

The Psalmist says, cvii. 35-88, ' He turneth the wil- 
derness into a standing water, and dry ground into 
water-springs ; and there he maketh the hungry to dwell 
that they may prepare a city for habitation, and sow the 
fields and plant vineyards, which, may yield fruits of 
increase. He blesseth them also, so that they are multi- 
plied greatly ; and suffereth not their cattle to decrease? 
Like expressions occur also in the prophets, Isa. xxxii. 
15, xxxv. 7, xli. 18. In the frequency with which the 
sacred writers draw upon the past to image forth the 
future, is it not more than probable that in using such 
language, they had before their minds the great histori- 
cal example of what they are depicting in Israel's march 
through, the desert ? There is nothing here certainly in 
any view of the subject to trouble any man who is able 



THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES. 101 

to do, what the Bishop says he can, "believe and receive 
the miracles of Scripture heartily, if only they are 
authenticated by a veracious history," p. 51. And even 
those who can persuade themselves that the plagues of 
Egypt and the passage of the Red Sea were simply won- 
derful conjunctures of extraordinary natural phenomena 
need have little difficulty, one would think, in extending 
these natural marvels a little further, and conceiving of 
rain and grass abounding in the desert at just that time, 
as it has never done before or since. 

The Bishop has one more question to raise, which, he 
says, " is not generally taken into consideration at all." 
In fact we are not sure that it is not original with him- 
self. " They must have passed the whole of the winter 
months under Sinai and must have found it bitterly cold." 
Where then did they find fuel? We do not know that 
we can do better than to refer him for information to the 
hewers of wood, and drawers of water, spoken of in 
Deut. xxix. 11. Perhaps it was where they found the 
timbers for the tabernacle, Ex. xxvi. 15 ; perhaps it was 
where the man went to gather sticks upon the Sabbath- 
day, Num. xv. 32 ; perhaps the wood from which the 
modern Arabs make their charcoal for the Egyptian 
markets (p. 127), may be a remnant of what the Israel- 
ites discovered and appropriated. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES COMPARED WITH THE 

EXTENT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN. 

The difficulty alleged in this cnapter is the following: 

" The whole land, which was divided among the tribes in the time of 
Joshua, iucluding the countries beyond the Jordan, was in extent about 
11,000 square miles, or 7,000,000 acres. And, according to the story, this 
was occupied by more than two millions of people." 

How, then, could God have spoken to Israel as he is 
said to have done in Ex. xxiii. 29, 30 ? 'I will not 
drive them [viz. the former occupants of the country] 
out from before thee in one year, lest the land become 
desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. 
By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, 
until thou be increased and inherit the land.' To make 
the absurdity of this apparent, a statement is given from 
the census of 1851 of the number of acres and the amount 
of population in "the three English agricultural counties 
of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex." 

" These counties of England are, at this very time, about as thickly 
peopled as the land of Canaan would have been with its population of 
Israelites only, without reckoning the aboriginal Canaanites, who already 
filled the land." "And surely it cannot be said that these three eastern 



NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 103 

counties, with their flourishing towns and their innumerable vil- 
lages, are in any danger of lying ' desolate,' with the beasts of the field 
multiplying against the human inhabitants." 

This might pass for a tolerably clever sophistical puz- 
zle; but, as an argument designed to produce conviction, 
it is weak enough. The fallacy lies in a dexterous con- 
founding of the land promised to Israel with the land 
actually divided among the tribes by Joshua. 

The territory granted to Israel may be likened to the 
early English colonies on this continent. The part orig- 
inally settled, and from which the aboriginal inhabitants 
were first expelled, was a mere strip along the sea-coast ; 
while the domain actually belonging to them was vastly 
more extensive, reaching, in the case of Israel, to the 
banks of the Euphrates, as in that of America to the 
shores of the Pacific. If an estimate were to be made of 
the population which the territory properly belonging to 
the United States is capable of supporting, Colenso could 
prove it to the last degree absurd by assuming that these 
hundreds of millions were to be crowded upon the acres 
of the thirteen states which, formed the American Union. 

In fact, if he will allow us a similar latitude, we can 
prove some of his own statements to be entirely ' unhis- 
torical.' He tells us, on page 83, that " the entire popu- 
lation of the city of London was 2,362,236 by the census 
of 1851," and on page 87, that it is about "twelve miles 
square." We suppose him to refer to the vast metropo- 
lis so called, embracing, in addition to the city proper, 
that immense aggregation of suburbs which have become 
united with it. But suppose that we deal with him as 
he has done with Moses, and apply what he has said of 
London in its widest extent to London in its strict and 
narrower sense. By the census of 1851 the city of Lon- 



104: NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 

don proper contained 14,580 inhabited houses. Now if 
these are to hold the population, and cover the space 
which Colenso alleges, we must assign 162 occupants and 
upwards of six acres of ground to every house. Clearly 
there is something wrong, either in the English census 
or in the Bishop's method of reasoning. 

We are sorry to be compelled to add, that his argu- 
ment is as dishonest as it is unsound. The verse next 
succeeding those which he quotes, and upon which he 
comments so unfairly, defines the territory of which the 
Lord is speaking, Ex. xxiii. 31, ' And I will set thy 
bounds from the Eed Sea, even unto the sea of the Phi- 
listines, and from the desert unto the river.' How can 
a man, with the least regard for truth, or even for his 
own reputation, ridicule a statement as manifestly false, 
because it is inapplicable to the narrow tract extending 
from the Mediterranean to just beyond the Jordan, when 
it is expressly declared to have reference to the territory 
bounded by the Eed Sea and the desert on the South, 
the Mediterranean on the West, and the river Euphrates 
on the East ? 

Even if these limits were never set to the Holy Land 
elsewhere, yet they are in the passage under considera- 
tion. When the declaration was made that the former 
inhabitants should not be driven out in one year, lest 
1 the land become desolate, and the beast of the field mul- 
tiply,' the extent of the land referred to was immediately 
defined to be as has just been stated. Why does the 
Bishop not even allude to this fact, in the course of his 
chapter, but base his whole argument on the assumption 
that a much more limited district is the one intended ? 

This is the more unpardonable, from the fact that this 
passage is not alone in fixing these boundaries for the 



NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 105 

promised land ; but that the same limits are repeatedly 
assigned to it in other places. Thus the original grant 
to Abraham was, Gen. xv. 18, ' Unto thy seed have I 
given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great 
river, the river Euphrates.' So Deut. xi. 24, ' From the 
wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Eu- 
phrates, even unto the uttermost sea [viz. the Mediterra- 
nean] shall your coast be.' Josh. i. 4, ' From the wil- 
derness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the 
river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the 
great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be 
your coast.' 

But further, the territory promised to Israel exceeded 
that which was actually divided among the tribes by 
Joshua, not only in its breadth from East to West, but 
also in its length from North to South. Instead of reach- 
ing merely from Dan to Beersheba, it was to extend from 
the river of Egypt, Num. xxxiv. 5, or from the Eed Sea, 
Ex. xxiii. 31, to the entrance of Hamath, Num. xxxiv. 
8, Josh. xiii. 5. For our present purpose, it is needless 
to discuss the disputed and doubtful question of the pre- 
cise position of this ' entrance to Hamath.' Whether we 
find it at the mouth of the Orontes, or in the depression 
at the northern end of Lebanon,* or at the city of Hamath 
itself, it still marks no small extension northward. 

Now although it was not the divine purpose to put 
Israel in immediate possession of this extended territory, 
lest it should l become desolate,' and although their own 
remissness obstructed their complete possession even of 
that portion which was at first divided amongst them, 
yet they did not forget the true extent of their claim, 

* So Robinson, Later Biblical Researches, pp. 568, 569. 

5* 



106 NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 

And hence we find David making war upon Hadad-ezer 
' as he went to recover Ms border at the river Euphrates,' 
2 Sam. viii. 3. And Jeroboam, the second of the name, is 
said, 2 Kin. xiv. 25, to have ' restored the coast of Israel 
from the entering of Hamath to the sea of the plain.' It 
was, in fact, only in the most glorious period of the 
Hebrew State, in the reign of Solomon, that the promised 
land, in its divinely -prescribed limits, was really or sub- 
stantially reduced to Israel's control. ; Solomon reigned 
over all kingdoms, from the river unto the land of the 
Philistines and unto the border of Egypt,' 1 Kin. iv. 21, 
2 Chron. ix. 26. And in his days Israel held possession 
'from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt,' 
1 Kin. viii. 65, and even of a port upon the Red Sea, 
1 Kin. ix. 26. 

If the Bishop was bent upon bringing an objection 
from "the extent of the land of Canaan" at all hazards, 
the fact just adverted to would have supplied him with a 
much better one than he has adduced. He might have 
said, what has in fact been said by others, that the boun- 
daries of the promised land, as described in the Penta- 
teuch, are not those belonging to the days of Moses and 
Joshua, but those of the days of Solomon. Now as a 
map of the United States, which should include Texas, 
must have been prepared after the annexation of that 
state, so, it might be urged, a description of the bounda- 
ries of the land of Israel, as they were in the days of 
Solomon, could not have been written prior to his reign ; 
and the existence of such a description, in writings 
ascribed to Moses, involves an anachronism which proves 
their spuriousness. This objection would have had a 
double advantage over the one which the Bishop has 
actually brought forward. In the first place, he would 



NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF C A AN AN. 107 

have escaped the necessity of a dishonest concealment of 
the facts ; and in the second place, his objection would 
have been of some force from his rationalistic point of 
view. 

To be sure, this objection would not, after all, be con- 
clusive ; but that is a difficulty arising out of the nature 
of things, and which those, who advocate the wrong side 
of a question, must make up their minds to experience. 
It would remain to be proved, that God, who sees the 
end from the beginning, could not make a promise to 
Abraham and to Moses, which he would fulfil to Solo- 
mon. And further, there is just enough difference 
between the ideal and the actual boundaries of Israel, 
the promise and its fulfilment, while justifying the sub- 
stantial truth of the former, to prove that it is not merely 
an antedated copy of the latter, a vaticinium ex evenlu. 
David and Solomon were at peace with the Sidonians, 
and entertained no thought of their conquest, 1 Kin. v. 
1, 6, 12. On the other hand, David subdued Moab, 
2 Sam. viii. 2, Amnion, ver. 12, and Edom, ver. 14. It 
is impossible that a sketch of Israel's boundaries, dating 
from that period, could have excluded Moab, Amnion, 
and Edom, Deut. ii. 5, 9, 19, and included the Sidonians, 
Judg. iii. 3; while it is quite natural that the altered cir- 
cumstances of the time should have modified the limits 
prescribed ages before. 

There is no escaping the conclusion, therefore, that 
limits were promised to the people under Moses and 
Joshua greater than they were enabled or permitted to 
occupy at that period, but which with unessential modi- 
fications, arising out of the subsequent course of events, 
they did occupy in the time of Solomon. The divine 
declaration, at which Colenso cavils, is thus abundantly 



108 NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 

verified. The fact is established beyond question, that 
the hostile nations were driven out by little and little, 
until Israel was increased and inherited the land ; and 
that the promise of this result was given long before its 
actual accomplishment. 

But Colenso might still object, that even within these 
enlarged boundaries two millions of people could have 
prevented the multiplication of wild beasts. 

' ; The colony of Natal has an extent of 18,000 square miles, and a popu- 
lation, white and black included, probably not exceeding 150,000 alto- 
gether. This population is, of course, very scanty, and the land will allow 
of a much larger one. Yet the human inhabitants are perfectly well able 
to maintain their ground against the beasts of the field.'' 

We do not know how it is at Natal, though the Bishop 
admits the existence of "leopards, wild boars, hysenas, 
and jackals," within the limits of his spiritual jurisdiction. 
We see it stated, however, in McCulloch's Universal 
Gazetteer, that the area of the province of Bengal is 
82,700 square miles, and its population in 1822 was 
24,887,000. This yields a proportion of 300 to the 
square mile, and as almost twice as densely peopled as 
the Bishop's own estimate nsakes Palestine to have been, 
and fully fifteen times more so than it would have been 
if Israel had at once taken .^possession of it up to the 
full limits of the promise. MeCulloch further tells us — 

w Tigers infest the jungles ; and these with elephants, buffaloes, gyals, 
wild deer, and boars, jackals, apes of many kinds, etc., are natives of Ben- 
gal. Crocodiles and gavials in the large rivers ; the cobra-di-capello 

and other formidable serpents, etc." 

Is MeCulloch l unhistorical ' too, or is the argument 
valid only when applied to Moses ? 



NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AND EXTENT OF CANAAN. 109 

The territory between the Jordan and the Euphrates, 
though spacious enough and productive enough to sus- 
tain several Syrian kingdoms in the days of David, was 
yet partly a wilderness, fitted chiefly for pasturage. The 
Bishop's figures are, therefore, deceptive for the addi- 
tional reason that the inhabitants would not be uniformly 
distributed throughout.; but while some parts of the land 
might be densely settled, other portions would contain a 
much more scanty population. The flocks of roving 
shepherds might be liable to the incursions of wild 
beasts, if the walled towns and cultivated farms were 
not. 

And that this was not wholly an imaginary danger, 
appears from the frequent mention of wild animals in 
the sacred history, as the lion which encountered Sam- 
son in the vineyards of Timnath, Judg. xiv. 5 ; the lion 
and the bear which attacked the sheep of Jesse, 1 Sam. 
xvii. 34 ; the lion slain by one of David's champions, 
2 Sam. xxiii. 20, and that which slew the unfaithful pro- 
phet, 1 Kin. xiii. 24 ; the bears, which tore in pieces the 
mocking children, 2 Kin. ii. -24 ; the lions sent among the 
heathen colonists planted in Samaria, 2 Kin. xviii. 25 ; and 
those which infested l the swelling'' of Jordan, even so late 
as the da}' s of Jeremiah, xlix. 19, 1. 44, not to speak of 
the period subsequent to the captivity, Zech. xi. 3. Even 
though every one of these incidents were dismissed as 
fabulous, the fact would remain-; for such fables could 
not have arisen, nor could images drawn from these ani- 
mals be so frequent in the prophets, and in the poetry of 
the bible, if they were not familiar in real life. Colenso 
may never have seen them in Natal, but they must have 
found their way into Palestine for all that. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS COMPARED WITH THE 
NUMBER OF MALE ADULTS. 

It is stated Num. iii. 43, that " all the first born males 
from a month old and upwards" were 22,273. As there 
were 600,000 males of twenty years and upwards, there 
must have been 900,000 or 1,000,000 males in all, and con- 
sequently but one first-born to forty or forty-four males. 

" So that, according to the story in the Pentateuch, every mother in 
Israel must have had on the average forty-two sons!'' 

Again, if it be supposed that one-fourth of the first- 
borns had died before the numbering took place, and 
there were as many first-born females as males, 

" there would then have been, if all had lived, about 60,000. But even 
this number of first-borns for a population of 1,800,000 would imply that 
each mother had on the average thirty children, fifteen sons and fifteen 
daughters. Besides which, the number of mothers must have been the 
same as that of the first-borns, male and female, including also any that 
had died. Hence there would have been only 60.000 child-bearing 
women to 600.000 men, so that only about one man in ten had a wife or 
children!'' 

These results are manifestly insupposable. Bat what 
is the conclusion, that Moses has blundered > or that his 



THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS, ETC. Ill 

antagonist has mistaken his meaning ? The latter antici- 
pates (p. 148), that "by this time, surely, great doubt 
must have arisen in the mind of most readers, as to the 
historical veracity of sundry portions of the Pentateuch." 
As we have seen no cause to entertain any doubts of this 
sort as yet, while we have seen cause enough to doubt 
the infallibility of the Bishop, we are not prepared to dis- 
card the Hebrew legislator without inquiring a little fur- 
ther. We would not be willing to fasten such absurd 
conclusions as the Bishop draws, upon even a respecta- 
ble writer of romance. His argument proves, what had 
been proved and confessed long before he was born, that 
there must be some mistake about the assumption that 
all the first-born males of the nation are reckoned in this 
enumeration. Moses, it is true, was directed to number 
all the first-born from a month old and upwards. But 
this must have been subject to some tacit limitation ; and 
the difficulty is, in the absence of sufficient data, to deter- 
mine what the nature and the ground of that limitation 
was. 

There is some little doubt in the outset as to what 
would entitle a child to be called the first-born. If a 
man had children by several wives, for example, would 
he have one first-born, or more than one in his family ? 
Upon the one side it is argued, that Jacob, Gen. xlix. 3, 
calls Eeuben his first-born, as though there were but one 
entitled to that distinction, notwithstanding the fact, 
that children were born to him by four different mothers. 
Also when Eeuben forfeited his right of primogeniture, 
this was devolved upon Joseph, 1 Chr. v. 1, as though 
that right could belong to but one in the family. So 
Deut. xxi. 15, in the case of a man having children 
by two wives, the one born first of all is declared to be 



112 THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS 

the first-born. On the other hand it is urged from the 
form of expression used in the law of consecration, 
Ex. xiii. 2, 12, 15, that the first-born of every mother is' 
here contemplated. The fact appears to have been that 
the paternal first-born was entitled to a double share of , 
the inheritance ; but the consecration attached to the 
maternal first-born. The assumption of the prevalence 
of polygamy, therefore, even if there were any reliable 
grounds on which to base it, would rather complicate 
than relieve the matter. 

There are three different opinions of greater or less 
plausibility as to the limitation to be put upon the enu- 
meration of the first-born. The first is the very obvious 
one, that only those were to be reckoned, who were not 
themselves parents or heads of families. By the fact of 
their marriage they are withdrawn from the family to 
which they previously belonged, and form a new family 
of their own. They are accordingly regarded not in their 
former but in their present relation, not as the first-born 
of their fathers' families, but as the heads of their own. 
Kurtz, who adopts this view of the case, argues that 
marriages in the Bast take place on an average as early 
as the fifteenth or sixteenth year. With a population of 
600,000 males over twenty years of age, there would 
probably be 200,000 under fifteen ; this would make one 
first-born for every nine males. Or, allowing that the 
number of females was equal to that of the males, there 
would be in 400,000 young, people, 44,546 first-born, or 
one in every nine. This requires the assumption that 
there were nine children on an average in every Israelitish 
family. This is a large number, it is true, but perhaps 
not too great considering how prolific the Israelites are 
said to have been Ex. i. 7, 12, 20. This computation, 



COMPARED WITH THE NUMBER OF MALE ADULTS. 113 

the Bishop, fond as he is of figures when put by himself, 
omits, though professing to answer Kurtz's argument. 

A second opinion is that of Baumgarten, and is based 
upon the redemption-money required of the supernume- 
raries. The 22,000 of the tribe of Levi were accepted in 
lieu of an equal number of the first-born in the other 
tribes. But for the redemption of the remaining 273, 
five shekels apiece were to be paid, Num. hi. 46, 47. 
This, according to Lev. xxvii. 6, was the amount fixed 
for the redemption of males " from a month old even 
unto five years old." Whence it appears to be not an 
unfair inference, that this was the limit of the ages of the 
first-born who were intended to be reckoned. The 
various stages of human life, as they are defined in this 
chapter of Leviticus, are under five years, between five 
and twenty, between twenty and sixty, and over sixty. 
It may have been understood that this enumeration was 
to be confined to the first stage of early childhood. If 
the fact be, as Bunsen alleges, that the surrounding 
heathen were in the habit of devoting their children to 
their idols when about this age, this is a coincidence 
which should not be overlooked. There might also be 
some historical reason for this limitation of which we are 
ignorant ; as for example, it might have been five years 
since Moses was first sent to renew their covenant with 
Grod, and to prepare the way for their redemption, and 
the children born from that time onward might be claimed 
as holy unto the Lord. 

A third opinion is perhaps more prevalent than either 
of the other two. It is that the law was not designed to 
be retro-active; but given as it was thirteen months 
before, at the time of instituting the passover on the eve 
of leaving Egypt, Ex. xiii. 2, 12-15, it has relation only 



114 THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS 

to those who were subsequently born. This is inferred 
still further from Num. iii. 13, viii. 17, ' on the day that I 
smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt ; I hallowed 
unto me all the first-born in Israel.' Thus Scott as quoted 
by Colenso : 

" Upon reflection, we shall find it to be by no means improbable that 
among 1,200,000 persons of both sexes, who were above twenty years of 
age (and many might marry much younger than that age) there should be 
within that time [and, he might have added, the preceding year] 50,000 
marriages ; that is, about the twelfth part of the company of marriageable 
persons of each sex. Especially, if we consider that multitudes might be 
inclined to marry, when they found that they were about to enjoy liberty : 
and when they recollected that the promises made to Israel peculiarly 
respected a very rapid increase, and that there would doubtless be a very 
great blessing upon them in this respect." 

Now, in our judgment, it would be a thousand-fold 
more reasonable to adopt any one of these explanations, 
than to suppose that either Moses or any other respectable 
writer would commit a blander so gross as to assign 
forty-two sons to every mother in Israel, or to allow a 
wife and children to only one man in ten. If the Pen- 
tateuch were purely a fiction, we would expect more 
attention than this to the probabilities of the case, unless 
the writer of it was destitute of sense. The difficulty in 
the matter consists, as before stated, not in finding pos- 
sible and plausible solutions, but in deciding in the 
absence of sufficient data which of these is the true one. 

Colenso addresses himself to our ignorance when he 
alleges that no limitation in the ages of the first-born 
can be admitted, because none is expressly stated, and 
that as the Levites of all ages were to be numbered, so 
must the first-born be for whom they were to be substi- 
tuted. Because we do not know what the limitation 
was, therefore there could be none, though the facts 



COMPARED WITH THE NUMBER OF MALE ADULTS. 115 

imperatively require it. If an agent of the Sunday 
School Union were to say in a public address that there 
were so many children in a given State or locality, he 
might, perhaps, intend to state the entire number of chil- 
dren of all ages, or he might mean all the children who 
were of an age to attend Sunday School. And if from 
statistics we found that the former could not be his 
meaning, we would not charge him with misrepresenta- 
tion or with error for not having expressly mentioned a 
limitation, which he might suppose would be understood 
by his hearers. It is to set aside the very first principles 
of interpretation to say (p. 145) " the Hebrew usage has 
nothing to do with the present question. We are here 
only concerned with all the first-born." Hebrew usage 
has every thing to do with it. What we are concerned 
to know is precisely who were reckoned the first-born 
according to that usage and in the intent of the law 
requiring their consecration. 

Much as such an acknowledgment would provoke the 
Bishop's scorn, we confess to such confidence in Moses 
and such reverence for his word, that even if these solu- 
tions should be proved to be impossible, which has never 
been done and cannot be done, we would still believe 
that there must be some other solution, though it has 
never yet been discovered. We heartily approve of the 
sentiment, which, as we had occasion to remark once 
before, the Bishop quotes with approbation (p. 16). 

"We should be very scrupulous about assuming that it is impossible to 
explain satisfactorily this or that apparent inconsistency, contradiction, or 
other anomaly considering that ours is an ex 'parte state- 
ment, and incapable of being submitted to the party against whom it is 
made." 

In fact, sooner than charge the author of the Penta- 



116 THE NUMBER OF FIRST-BORNS. 

teuch with the absurdities which the Bishop, in the face 
of his own maxim, labours to fasten upon him, we would 
resort to the supposition that some transcriber, in the 
long period which has elapsed since the days of Moses, 
made an error in the figures. And we are confirmed in 
the view which we take of the matter by a curious cir- 
cumstance in connection with this very enumeration 
which we are now considering. The Levites, who were 
accepted as substitutes for the first-born of the other 
tribes^ were numbered at the same time. The census of 
each of the three Levitical families is first given, viz. the 
Gershonites 7,500, ver. 22, the Kohathites 8,600, ver. 28, 
the Merarites 6,200, ver. 34 ; then these are summed up 
and the number of the whole tribe stated to be 22,000, 
ver. 39. The true total is 22,300, leaving a discrepancy 
of 300 to be accounted for. 

The Bishop may conclude from this that Moses was 
ignorant of the simplest rules of arithmetic. But few, 
we presume, will be disposed to follow him in doing so. 
Other inquirers have hit upon two solutions. One is 
that there is a mistake in the number through some error 
of transcription ; and if this could take place in one 
instance, why not in another? A second solution is, 
that the 300 omitted in the final summation were the 
first-born of the tribe of Levi, who by the law were 
already consecrated themselves, and therefore could not 
stand as substitutes for the first-born in the other tribes. 
If this be so, 300 first-born in a tribe numbering 22,000 
from a month old and upward, is a smaller proportion 
still than 22,273 in 900,000 or 1,000,000 ; and then we 
have here a fresh proof that there must have been some 
limitation of age in computing the first-born. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

Ex. xii. 40. ' Now the sojourning of the children of 
Israel who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty 
years.* 

These words have been differently understood from 
very early times. The first impression, and that most 
naturally derived from them, is, that the children of 
Israel spent four hundred and thirty years in Egypt. 
Another very ancient interpretation, however, includes 
the migrations of their ancestors in Canaan as well as 
the abode in Egypt, in the period here given. As our 
author correctly informs us : — 

" The Vatican copy of the LXX renders the passage thus : ' The 
sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt and in 
the land of Canaan, was 430 years.' The Alexandrian has, ' The sojourn- 
ing of the children of Israel, which tliey and their fathers sojourned in 
Egypt and in the land of Canaan, was 430 years.' The Samaritan has, 
1 The sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers, which they 
sojourned in the land of Canaan and in the land of Egypt, was 430 years.' " 

The gloss thus put upon this passage in Exodus, as it 
seemed to have the authority of an inspired apostle in its 
favour in Gal. iii. 17, and as the genealogy of Moses, 
Ex. vi. 16-20, appeared to preclude the supposition that 
430 years were spent in Egypt, became the accepted and 



118 THE SOJOUKNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

well nigh universal view of the case. It still has its 
advocates, though the leading biblical scholars of Europe 
have abandoned it. 

It is so rare a thing to find Colenso standing fast by 
current and traditional opinions, that we are sorry to 
disturb his repose in the present instance. But, in fact, 
his concession to received views is from no lingering 
attachment to his ancient faith. If the 430 years em- 
braced the peregrinations in Canaan as well as the abode 
in Egypt, only 210 or 215 years will remain for the lat- 
ter; and then, as the Bishop proposes to show, (p. 148,) 
" the children of Israel, at the time of the Exodus, could 
not have amounted to two millions, — in fact, the whole 
body of warriors could not have been two thousand." 
A concession, made with such a view as this, may well 
provoke examination. 

The Bishop tells us at the outset that the original 
words in this passage in Exodus — 

" would be more naturally translated (as in the Yuigate, Chaldee, Syriac, 
and Arabic Versions) ' the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they 
sojourned in Egypt? but for the serious difficulties which would thus arise." 

The most serious difficulty, we apprehend, and that 
which was most influential with him, was that if he 
accepted this obvious sense of the words, his opportunity 
to cavil at the immense multiplication of the children of 
Israel would be cut off. 

But what are "the serious difficulties" which he 
alleges ? 

" In the first place, St. Paul, referring to ' the covenant, that was con- 
firmed before of God' unto Abraham, says 'the law,' which was four hun- 
dred and thirty years after, cannot disannul it,' GaL iii. IT. It is plain, 
then, that St. Paul dates the beginning of the four hundred and thirty 
years, not from the going down into Egypt, but from the time of the pro- 
mise made to Abraham." 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 119 

We cannot help remarking upon the readiness here 
manifested to defer to the authority of an apostle as con- 
clusive of the meaning of a passage in Exodus, when a 
few pages later he will not allow the like interference of 
another inspired writer in a similar instance. When a 
passage is adduced from Chronicles, which upsets a 
theory of his regarding certain statements of the Penta- 
teuch, his reply is, (p. 157) — 

" We are not here concerned with the books of Chronicles .... but 
with the narrative in the Pentateuch itself and book of Joshua, and must 
abide by the data which they furnish." 

We remember, however, that circumstances alter cases. 
We should not expect so good a reasoner as Colenso to 
be consistent. It is convenient to admit the testimony 
of inspiration this time, but it may not be agreeable to do 
it always. 

This language of the apostle, however, does not appear 
to us to be decisive of the point at issue. The interval 
of time is only incidentally mentioned. Precision of 
statement regarding it was of no consequence to his argu- 
ment. An opinion existed, and prevailed more or less 
widely, that it was but 430 years from the promise made 
to Abraham to the Exodus. It would not serve his pre- 
sent purpose to argue this point, or to make a categorical 
revelation respecting it. Enough was conceded on all 
hands to answer the end at which he was aiming. The 
interval was 430 years at least, as all confessed : whether 
it was more than this, he does not say, but leaves us to 
ascertain from other sources. 

The evidence is, we think, conclusive, that the abode 
in Egypt lasted 430 years. This is the natural sense of 
Ex. xii. 40, and none would ever think of extracting a 



120 THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

different meaning from it, but for reasons found outside 
of the verse itself. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not 
' children of Israel,' that their sojourning should be 
included ; and the verse makes no allusion to Canaan, 
but only to Egypt. It was also revealed to Abraham, 
Gen. xv. 13, etc., that his seed should ' be a stranger in 
a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they 

shall afflict them four hundred years but in the 

fourth generation they shall come hither again.' The 
abode of the patriarchs in the land already promised to 
them is here positively excluded. They were to be 
strangers for four hundred years in a land not their own, 
and where they would be reduced to bondage, and suffer 
affliction. That this was not to take place until after 
Abraham's decease, appears from the contrast in ver. 15, 
' and thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace ; thou shalt be 
buried in a good old age.' 

The prediction gives as the term of this foreign resi- 
dence the round number 400 years : the record of the 
fulfilment states it with precision 430. Colenso himself 
yields the point, when he says, (p. 155,) that the fourth 
generation here spoken of can only be reckoned " from 
the time when they should leave the land of Canaan and 
go down into Egypt." The generation meant is a cen- 
tury, and ' the fourth generation ' is a repetition in other 
terms of the ' four hundred years.' 

The Bishop is able to find but one other " serious diffi- 
culty." This is the genealogy of Moses and Aaron in 
the sixth chapter of Exodus : 

Yer. 16. ' And these are the names of the sons of Levi, 
according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, 
and Merari. And the years of the life of Levi were an 
hundred thirty and seven years. 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES m EGYPT.. 121 

17. ' The sons of Gershon .... 

18. ' And the sons of Kohath ; Amram, and Izhar, 
and Hebron, and Uzziel ; and the years of the life of 
Kohath were an hundred and thirty and three years. - 

19. { And the sons of Merari .... 

20. ' And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sis- 
ter to wife ; and she bare him Aaron and Moses. And 
the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and 
thirty and seven years. 

21. ' And the sons of Izhar 

22. ' And the sons of Uzziel ' 

Upon this he makes the following remarks : — 

" Now supposing that Kohath was only an infant, when brought down 
by his father to Egypt with Jacob, Gen. xlvL 11, and that he begat 
Amram at the very end of his life, when 133 years old, and that Amram, 
in like manner, begat Moses, when he was 131 years old, still these two 
numbers added to 80 years, the age of Moses at the time of the Exodus, 
Ex. vii. 1, would only amount to 350 years, instead of 430. 

" Once more, it is stated in the above passage, that ' Amram took him 
Jochebed his father's sister,' — Kohath's sister, and therefore Levi's 
daughter, — ' to wife.' And so also we read Num. xxvi. 59 : ' The name 
of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare 
to hvm in EgypV 

" Now Levi was one year older than Judah, and was therefore 43 years 
old when he went down with Jacob into Egypt ; and we are told above, 
that he was 137 years old, when he died. Levi, therefore, must have lived? 
according to the story, 94 years in Egypt. Making here again the extreme 
supposition of his begetting Jochebed in the last year of his life, she may 
have been an infant 94 years after the migration of Jacob and his sons 
into Egypt. Hence it follows that, if the sojourn in Egypt was 430 years, 
Moses, who was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, must have been 
born 350 years after the migration into Egypt, when his mother, even at 
the above extravagant supposition, must have been at the very least 256 
years old." 

Very well. But how does this genealogy agree with 
the alternative theory, which the Bishop has undertaken 

6 



122 THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

to defend, and which divides the years of sojourning 
between Egypt and Canaan. He confesses that this is 
" not without a strain upon one's faith." For even 
according to this hypothesis, Moses was born 80 years 
before the Exodus or 135 years after the migration into 
Egypt. And if Jochebed was born to Levi when he was 
100 years old or 57 years after Jacob's migration, she 
would have been 78 when Moses was born. 

Now as we do not think it safe to put the Bishop's 
faith to any more violent " strain " than is absolutely 
necessary, we hasten to relieve his mind of all difficulty 
even as to the longer term, by informing him that beyond 
all question some links have been omitted in tracing the 
line of Moses' descent. 

It can scarcely be necessary to adduce proof to one 
who has even a superficial acquaintance with the geneal- 
ogies of the Bible, that these are frequently abbreviated 
by the omission of unimportant names. In fact abridg- 
ment is the general rule, induced by the indisposition of 
the sacred writers to encumber their pages with more 
names than were necessary for their immediate purpose. 
This is so constantly the case, and the reason for it is so 
obvious, that the occurrence of it need create no surprise 
anywhere, and we are at liberty to suppose it whenever 
anything in the circumstances of the case favours that 
belief. 

The omissions in the genealogy of our Lord as given 
in Matthew i., are familiar to all. Thus in ver. 8, 
three names are dropped between Joram and Ozias 
(Uzziah), viz. Ahaziah 2 Kings ix. 29, Joash 2 Kings xii. 
1, and Amaziah 2 Kings xiv. 1 ; and in ver. 11 Jehoia- 
kim is omitted after Josiah 2 Kings xxiii. 34, Chron. iii. 
16. And in ver. 1, the entire genealogy is summed up 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 123 

in two steps " Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of 
Abraham." 

Other instances abound elsewhere ; we mention only a 
few of the most striking. In 1 Chron. xxvi. 24 we read 
in a list of appointments made by King David (see 
1 Chron. xxiv. 3, xxv. 1, xxvi. 26), that Shebuel,* the 
son of Gershom, the son of Moses, was ruler of the trea- 
sures ; and again in 1 Chron. xxiii. 15, 16, we find it 
written ' The sons of Moses were Gershom and Eliezer. 
Of the sons of Gershom Shebuel was the chief.' Now 
with all Colenso's contempt for the " Chronicler," he can 
scarcely charge him with ignorance so gross as to suppose 
that the grandson of Moses could be living in the reign 
of David and appointed by him to a responsible office. 
Again in the same connection 1 Chron. xxvi. 31, ' among 
the Hebronites was Jerijah the chief;' and this Jerijah 
or Jeriah (for the names are identical,) was, xxiii. 19, the 
first of the sons of Hebron, and Hebron was ver. 12, the 
son of Kohath, the son of Levi, ver. 6. So that upon 
Colenso's principle of not allowing for any contraction 
in genealogical lists, we have the great-grandson of Levi 
holding a prominent office in the reign of David. Per- 
haps the Bishop can tell us, how old his mother must 
have been when he was born. Jochebed bearing Moses 
in her two hundred and fifty-sixth year would be nothing 
to it. 

The genealogy of Ezra is recorded in the book which 
bears his name ; but we learn from another passage, in 
which the same line of descent is given, that it has been 



* He is called in 1 Chron. xxiv. 20, a son of Amram, the ancestor of : 
Moses ; for Shubael and Shebuel are in all probability mere orthographic 
variations of the same name. 



124: THE SOJOUKNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

abridged by the omission of six consecutive names. 
This will appear from the following comparison, viz : 



1 Chron. vL 3-14. 


Ezra vii. 1-5. 


1. Aaron 


Aaron 


2. Eleazar 


Eleazar 


3. Phinehas 


Phinehas 


4. Abishua 


Abishua 


5. Bukki 


Bukki 


6. Uzzi 


Uzzi 


7. Zerakiah 


Zerahiah 


8. Meraiotk 


Meraioth 


9. Amariah 




10. Ahitub 




11. Zadok 




12. Ahimaaz 




13. Azariah 




14. Johanan 




15. Azariah 


Azariah 


16. Amariak 


Amariah 


17. Ahitub 


Ahitub 


18. Zadok 


Zadok 


19. Shallum 


Shallum 


20. Hilkiah 


Hilkiah 


21. Azariah 


Azariah 


22. Seraiah 


Seraiah 




Ezra 



Still further Ezra relates viii. 1-2 : — 

1 These are now the chief of their fathers, and this is 
the genealogy of them that went up with me from Baby- 
lon, in the reign of Artaxerxes the Kiog. Of the sons 
of Phinehas, Gershom. Of the sons of Ithamar, Daniel. 
Of the sons of David, Hattush.' 

Here, according to the Bishop's principle of interpreting 
genealogies, we have a great-grandson and a grandson of 
Aaron, and a son of David coming up with Ezra from 
Babylon after the captivity. Now, though the Bishop, 
p. 157, by a stroke of his pen and without assigning any 



THE SOJOURNING OP THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 125 

reason for it, decides that this book was " certainly com- 
posed long after the captivity," he can scarcely think its 
author so utterly ignorant of chronology as this would 
imply. Or if he were even prepared to go this length, 
such a conclusion is precluded by the more detailed 
genealogy of Hattush in 1 Chron. iii., see ver. 22, espe- 
cially as he assigns the books of Chronicles to ' the same 
author who wrote the book of Ezra.' 

This disposition to abbreviate genealogies by the 
omission of whatever is unessential to the immediate 
purpose of the writer is shown by still more remarkable 
reductions than those which we have been considering. 
Persons of different degrees of relationship are sometimes 
thrown together under a common title descriptive of the 
majority, and all words of explanation, even those which 
seem essential to the sense, are rigorously excluded, the 
supplying of these chasms being left to the independent 
knowledge of the reader. Hence several passages in the 
genealogies of Chronicles have now become hopelessly 
obscure. They may have been intelligible enough to 
contemporaries ; but for those who have no extraneous 
sources of information, the key to their explanation is 
wanting. In other cases we are able to understand 
them, because the information necessary to make them 
intelligible is supplied from parallel passages of Scrip- 
ture. Thus the opening verses of Chronicles contain the 
following bald list of names without a word of explana- 
tion, viz. : 

1 Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered, 
Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and 
Japheth.' 

We are not told who these persons are, how they were 
related to each other, or whether they were related. The 



126 THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

writer presumes that his readers have the book of Grenesis 
in their hands, and that the simple mention of these 
names in their order will be sufficient to remind them 
that the first ten trace the line of descent from father to 
son from the first to the second great progenitor of man- 
kind ; and that the last three are brothers, although no 
thing is said to indicate that their relationship is different 
from the preceding. 

Again, the family of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, is 
spoken of in the following terms in 1 Chron. i. 36 : 

' The sons of Eliphaz : Teman and Omar, Zephi and 
Gratam, Kenaz and Timna, and Amalek.' 

J^ow, by turning to Gen. xxxvi. 11, 12, we shall see 
that the first five are sons of Eliphaz, and the sixth his 
concubine, who was the mother of the seventh. This is 
so plainly written in Grenesis, that the author of Chroni- 
cles, were he the most inveterate blunderer could not 
have mistaken it. But trusting to the knowledge of his 
readers to supply the omission, he leaves out the state- 
ment respecting Eliphaz's concubine, but at the same 
time connects her name and that of her son with the 
family to which they belong, and this though he was 
professedly giving a statement of the sons of Eliphaz. 

So likewise in the pedigree of Samuel (or Shemuel, 
ver. 33, the difference in orthography is due to our 
translators, and is not in the original), which is given in 
1 Chron. vi., in both an ascending and descending series. 
Thus in vs. 22-24 : 

' The sons of Kohath : Amminadab his son, Korah his 
son, Assir his son, Elkanah his son, and Ebiasaph his 
son, and Assir his son, Tahath his son, etc' 

The extent to which the framer of this list has studied 
comprehensiveness and conciseness will appear from the 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES LN EGYPT. 127 

fact, which no one would suspect unless informed from 
other sources, that while the general law which prevails 
in it is that of descent from father to son, the third, fourth, 
and fifth names are brothers. This is shown by a com- 
parison of Ex. vi. 24, and the parallel genealogy, 
1 Chron. vi. 36, 37. So that the true line of descent is 



the following, viz. : 












In vs. 22-24 Kohath 


In 


vs. 


3*7, 


38 


Kohath 


Amminadab 










Izhar 


Korah 










Korah 


Assir, Elkanah, Ebiasaph 










Ebiasaph 


Assir 










Assir 


Tahath, etc. 










Tahath, etc, 



The circumstance that the son of Kohath is called in 
one list Amminadab, and in the other Izhar, is no real 
discrepancy and can create no embarrassment, since it is 
no unusual thing for the same person to have two names. 
Witness Abram and Abraham, Jacob and Israel, 
Joseph and Zaphnath-paaneah, Glen. xli. 45, Oshea, 
Jehoshua, Num. xiii. 16 (or Joshua) and Jeshua, Neh. 
viii. 17, Gideon and Jerubbaal, Judg. vi. 32, Solomon and 
Jedidiah, 2 Sam. xii. 24, 25, Azariah and Uzziah, 2 Kin. 
xv. 1. 13, Daniel and Belteshazzar, Hananiah, Mishael, 
Azariah and Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Dan. i. 7 ; 
Saul and Paul, Thomas and Didymus, Cephas and Peter, 
and in profane history Cyaxares and Darius, Octavianus 
and Augustus, Napoleon and Buonaparte, Ferretti and 
Pius IX., Colenso and Natal (p. 37). 

"We think that with these facts before him it would be 
putting no undue strain upon the Bishop's ' faith' to ask 
him to admit that the genealogy of Moses may have been 
condensed, as so many others have been, by the dropping 
of some of the less important names. The question, with 



128 THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

which, we are concerned, is not how the Bishop would 
have constructed a genealogy, nor how in his opinion 
the Hebrews ought to have kept their genealogies, or in- 
spired men ought to have recorded them, but what are 
the facts ? What is the structure of the genealogies 
actually found in the Scriptures? And inasmuch as 
names, which would be a needless incumbrance, are so 
frequently passed over ; why may not that be the case 
in the present instance ?* 

We need not content ourselves, however, with a pos- 

* We may here be indulged with a remark aside from the special topic 
before us, viz. : that if scientific research should ever demonstrate what it 
cannot be said to have done as yet, that the race of man has existed upon 
the earth for a longer period than the ordinary Hebrew Chronology will 
allow, we would be disposed to seek the solution in this frequent, if not 
pervading, characteristic of the Scriptural genealogies. The Septuagint 
chronology, to which many have fled in their desire to gain the additional 
centuries which it allots to human history, is, we are persuaded, a bro- 
ken reed. The weight of evidence preponderates immensely in favour 
of the correctness of the Hebrew text, and against the accuracy of the 
deviations of the Septuagiut. But it must not be forgotten that there is an 
element of uncertainty in a computation of time which rests upon gene- 
alogies, as the sacred chronology so largely does. Who is to certify us 
that the ante-diluvian and ante-Abrahamic genealogies have not been con- 
densed in the same manner as the post-Abrahamic ? If Matthew omitted 
names from the ancestry of our Lord in order to equalize the three great 
periods over which he passes, may not Moses have done the same in order 
to bring out seven generations from Adam to Enoch, and ten from Adam 
to Noah ? Our current chronology is based upon the primd facie im- 
pression of these genealogies. This we shall adhere to, until we see good 
reason for giving it up. But if these recently discovered indications of the 
antiquity of man, over which scientific circles are now so excited, shall, 
when carefully inspected and thoroughly weighed, demonstrate all that 
any have imagined they might demonstrate, what then ? They will 
simply show that the popular chronology is based upon a wrong interpre- 
tation, and that a select and partial register of ante-Abrahamic names has 
been mistaken for a complete one. 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 129 

sibilitj or a probability ; we have the means of arriving 
at positive certainty. This is afforded us in the first 
place by parallel genealogies of the same period, as that 
of Bezaleel, 1 Chron. ii. 18-20, which records seven 
generations from Jacob, and that of Joshua, 1 Chron. vii. 
23-27, which records eleven. Now, it is not conceivable 
without a very severe 'strain upon one's faith,' that 
there should be eleven links in the line of descent from 
Jacob to Joshua, and only four from Jacob to Moses. 

A still more convincing proof is yielded by Num. iii. 
19, 27, 28, from which it appears that the four sons of 
Kohath severally gave rise to the families of the Amra- 
mites, the Izeharites, the Hebronites, and the Uzzielites ; 
and that the number of the male members of these fami- 
lies of a month old and upward was 8,600 one year after 
the Exodus. So that if no abridgment has taken place 
in the genealogy, the grandfather of Moses had in the 
lifetime of the latter 8,600 descendants of the male sex 
alone, 2,750 of them being between the ages of thirty 
and fifty, Num. iv. 36. 

It may suit the purposes of Colenso (p. 170), to attempt 
to fasten such a glaring Munchausenism as this upon the 
author of the Pentateuch. But persons of a more sober 
judgment will conclude that whether the Pentateuch is 
a history or a fiction, this cannot be its meaning ; and 
they will prefer to avoid this incredible result by assum- 
ing that the genealogy of Moses is constructed upon the 
same principle of condensation, which prevails to so 
great an extent in those, which are found in other parts 
of Scripture. Is there anything, then, in the structure 
of this genealogy to preclude so necessary an assump- 
tion? 

It might appear at first sight as though there was, and 

6* 



130 THE SOJOURRIN'G OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

as though the letter of it shut us up to the inevitable 
conclusion that there were four links and no more from 
Jacob to Moses. The names which we find without 
deviation in all the genealogies, are Jacob, Levi, Kohath, 
Amram, Moses, Ex. vi. 16-20, Num. iii. 17-19, xxvi. 
57-59, 1 Chron. vi. 1-3, 16-18, xxiii. 6-12-13. Now 
unquestionably Levi was Jacob's own son. So likewise 
Kohath was the son of Levi, Gen. xlvi. 11, and born 
before the descent into Egypt. Amram also was the 
immediate descendant of Kohath ; it is not possible, as 
Kurtz proposes, to insert the missing links between 
them. For in the first place according to Num. xxvi. 59, 
' the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter 
of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt,' 
this Jochebed being, Ex. vi. 20, ' his father's sister.' 
Now while a ' daughter of Levi ' might have the general 
sense of a descendant of Levi, as the woman healed by 
our Lord, Luke xiii. 16, is called a ' daughter of Abra- 
ham,' the words which follow are too specific to admit 
of this interpretation. A daughter born to Levi in Egypt 
naturally suggests the contrast of members of his family 
born before he left Canaan, and seems to confine the 
meaning to one of Levi's own children. Kurtz proposes 
to rid himself of this troublesome expression by assuming 
that it is an interpolation. But that is an extreme mea- 
sure, not to be resorted to except in cases of absolute 
necessity. Jochebed, therefore, was Levi's own daugh- 
ter, and the sister of Kohath, who must accordingly have 
been Amram's own father. And secondly, Amram was, 
Num. iii. 27, the father of one of the four subdivisions 
of the Kohathites, these subdivisions springing from 
Kohath's own children, and comprising together 8,600 
male descendants. Moses' father surely could not have 



THE SOJOUKNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 131 

been the ancestor of one-fourth of this number in Moses' 
own days. 

To avoid this difficulty Tiele* and Keilf assume that 
there were two Amrams, one the son of Kohath, another, 
who was a more remote descendant but bore the same 
name with his ancestor, the father of Moses. This 
relieves the embarrassment created by the Amramites, 
Num. iii. 27, but is still liable to that which arises from 
making Jochebed the mother of Moses. And further 
the structure of the genealogy in Ex. vi. is such as to 
make this hypothesis unnatural and improbable. Yerse 
16 names the three sons of Levi, Gershon, Kohath, and 
Merari; vers. 17-19 the sons of each in their order; vers. 
20-22 the children of Kohath's sons ; vers. 23-24 con- 
tain descendants of the next generation, and ver. 25 the 
generation next following. Now according to the view 
of Tiele and Keil we must either suppose that the 
Amram, Izhar and Uzziel of vers. 20-22 are all different 
from the Amram, Izhar and Uzziel of ver. 18, or else 
that Amram though belonging to a later generation than 
Izhar and Uzziel, is introduced before them, which the 
regular structure of the genealogy forbids, and besides 
the sons of Izhar, and the sons of Uzziel who are here 
named, were the contemporaries of Moses and Aaron the 
sons of Amram, Num. xvi. 1, Lev. x. 4. 

This subject may be relieved from all perplexity, how- 
ever, by observing that Amram and Jochebed were not 
the immediate parents, but only the ancestors of Aaron 
and Moses. How many generations may have inter- 
vened we cannot tell. It is indeed said Ex. vi. 20, Num. 
xxvi. 59, that Jochebed bare them to Amram ; but in 

* Das erste Buck Moses, p. 409, etc 

f Biblischer Commentar iiber die Bucher Mose's I. p, 350. 



132 THE SOJOURNING- OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

the language of genealogies this simply means that they 
were descended from her and from Amram. Thus in 
Gen. xlvi. 18, after recording the sons of Zilpah, her 
grandsons and her great-grandsons, the writer adds, 
1 These are the sons of Zilpah .... and these she bare unto 
Jacob, even sixteen souls.' The same thing recurs in the 
case of Bilhah, ver. 25 : ' she bare these unto Jacob ; all the 
souls were seven.' Compare vers. 15, 22. No one can 
pretend here that the author of this register did not use 
the term understandingly of descendants beyond the first 
generation. In like manner according to Mat. i. 11, 
Josias begat his grandson Jechonias, and ver. 8, Joram 
begat his great-great-grandson Ozias. And in Gen. x. 
15-18 Canaan, the grandson of Noah, is said to have 
begotten several whole nations, the Jebusite, the Amo- 
rite, the Girgasite, the Hivite, etc., etc. Nothing can be 
plainer, therefore, than that in the usage of the Bible, ' to 
bear ' and ' to beget ' are used in a wide sense to indicate 
descent, without restricting this to the immediate off- 
spring. 

Nothing, therefore, obliges us to regard Amram and 
Jochebed as the immediate parents of Aaron and Moses, 
unless it be that, Lev. x. 4, Uzziel, Amram's brother, is 
called ' the uncle (i%) of Aaron.' But, in fact, the He- 
brew Vf, like the English cousin (from consanguineus), 
though often specifically applied to a definite degree of 
relationship, has,' both from etymology and usage, a 
much wider sense. Accordingly, "H, Jer. xxxii. 12, has 
the same meaning as *i"~^ 9 ver. 8, showing that it may 
mean cousin as well as uncle. But, though the word 
were restricted in its significance to a father's brother, it 
must still, of necessity, have a range equal to that of 
father itself, and denote in general the brother of a 



THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 133 

paternal ancestor. A great-great-grand-uncle is still an 
uncle, and would be properly described by the term tt. 

It may also be observed, that in the actual history of 
the birth of Moses his parents are not called Amram and 
Jochebed. It is simply said, Ex. ii. 1 : ' And there went 
a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter 
of Levi.' 

If it be asked, why were just these three remote ances- 
tors of Moses named, and his more immediate progeni- 
tors omitted? the answer is, that these characterized 
with sufficient accuracy the line of descent to which he 
belonged. He was of the tribe of Levi, of the family of 
Kohath, and of that division of the family which was 
descended from Amram. To one familiar with the 
tribal system of Israel this described everything that was 
essential. Princeton, New Jersey, 17. S. A., would be a 
sufficient designation of the place where we are writing, 
without the necessity of inserting the minuter divisions 
of township and county. The lineage of the present 
sovereign of Great Britain would be sufficiently indi- 
cated, and her claim to the throne exhibited, by pointing 
out that she is sprung from the house of Hanover, and 
this from the Stuarts, and the Stuarts from the Planta- 
genets, the Plantagenets from the Tudors, and the Tu- 
dors from the house of Normandy. That Yictoria is the 
rightful heiress of George I., who was descended from 
James L, who was descended from Henry YIL, who was 
descended from Henry II., who was descended from 
William the Conqueror, tells the whole story. Her line 
of descent is completely traced without the insertion of 
another name. 

The conclusion of the whole matter, therefore, is that 
the genealogy of Moses and Aaron interposes no obstacle 



134 THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

to understanding Ex. xii. 40, as Colenso tells us it may 
1 more naturally ' be understood. And as this is the last 
of the ' serious difficulties ' 6f which he speaks, in the 
way of this more natural interpretation, we cannot but 
think that the way is open for him to adopt it without 
any further ' strain upon his faith.' Israel was 430 years 
in Egypt. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 

Colenso understands the declaration, Gen. xv. 16, 'in 
the fourth generation they shall come hither again,' to 
mean that the descendants of the patriarchs at the fourth 
remove from those who went down into Egypt, should 
leave the land of their oppression. He nowhere inti- 
mates that the expression has ever been understood, or 
can possibly be understood, in any other way. If he had 
studied Kurtz as carefully as he professes to have done, 
he ought to have learned that the term ' generation ' is 
often used to denote the entire body of contemporary 
men, and that its duration is measured by the length of 
human life. Thus, it is said, Ex. i. 6 : ' And Joseph 
died, and all his brethren, and all that generation ;' 
although Joseph's life was extended to four generations, 
in the narrower sense of the term, for he saw his son 
Ephraim's great-grandsons, Glen. 1. 23. A hundred years 
is not too long an estimate for a generation at that period, 
and in that case the fourth generation will be coincident 
with the 400 years, ver. 12, during which Abraham's 
seed was to be ' a stranger in a land that is not theirs.' 

But the Bishop undertakes to confirm his view of the 
case in the following manner • 



136 



THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 



" If we examine the different genealogies of remarkable men, which are 
given in various places of the Pentateuch, we shall find that, as a rule, 
the contemporaries of Moses and Aaron are descendants in the third, and 
those of Joshua and Eleazar in the fourth generation, from some one of the 
sons, or adult grandsons, of Jacob, who went down with him into Egypt. 
Thus we have : — 





1st Gen. 2d Gen. 


3d Gen. 4th Gen. 


5th Gen. 


Levi , . . 


. Kohath Amram Moses .... 


Ex. vi. 16, 18, 20 




.Kohath Amram 


Aaron .... 


Ex. vi. 16, 18, 20 




, Kohath Uzziel 


Mishael .... 


.... Lev. x. 4. 




, Kohath Uzziel 


Elzaphan 


.... Lev x. 4. 




.Kohath Izhar 


Korah .... 


.... Num. xvi. 1. 


Reuben . 


.Pallu Eliab 


Dathan .... 


.... Num. xxvi. 7-9. 


Reuben 


.Pallu Eliab 


Abiram .... 


.... Num. xxvi. 7-9. 


Zarah. . 


. Zabdi Carmi 


Achan .... 


.... Josh. vii. 1. 


Pharez. . 


.Hezron Ram 


Amminadab Nahshon 


Ruth iv. 18, 19. 


Pharez . 


.Hezron Segub 


Jair .... 


1 Ch. ii. 21, 22. 


Pharez . 


.Hezron Caleb 


Hur Uri Bezaleel 1 Ch. ii. 18-20." 



Upon this tabular exhibit we may remark first, that 
the measure of correspondence which appears in it is in 
part produced by forcing. "While the first seven are 
counted from the sons of Jacob, the last four are reck- 
oned from his grandsons. Nahshon would be the fifth, 
and Bezaleel the sixth from Judah ; or, if the other mode 
of reckoning be adopted, Moses, Aaron, etc., would be 
the second from Kohath. It is too bad for the Bishop 
to try to impose upon his readers by the remark, that 

" Hezron, as well as his father, Pharez, was born, according to the story, 
in the land of Canaan ; so that Bezaleel was actually still in the fourth 
generation from one who went down into Egypt." 

The very first difficulty which he alleges in the Mosaic 
narrative, and to which he devotes two chapters, is that 
Hezron, " according to the story" could not have been 
born in the land of Canaan. With the best disposition 
to accommodate the "Bishop, we cannot suffer him to 



THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 137 

stand on both sides of the same fence. Secondly, the 
correspondence would be still further destroyed by 
including Zelophehad,* Num. xxvii. 1, the fifth, and 
Joshua, 1 Chron. vii. 22-27, the tenth from Joseph. 
Thirdly, it has already been shown that the genealogy of 
Moses and Aaron is abridged, by omitting some of their 
more immediate ancestors. The same argument is valid 
for Mishael, Elzaphan, and Korah, and, to say the least, 
creates a probability that the same is the case with the 
rest. Fourthly, that the genealogy in which Kahshon 
stands has been similarly condensed, is susceptible of 
ready proof. His grandson, Boaz, Euth iv. 21, 22, was 
the son of Rahab, Matt. i. 5, and the great-grandfather 
of David. As Rahab was a woman in mature life at the 
time of the miraculous passage of the Jordan, and it was 
about 360 yearsf from that event to the birth of David, 
some names must have been dropped from the genealogy 

* If it were not for the Bishop's arithmetical pedantry and his incessant 
display of figures, we would take no notice of the following slip, which 
need create no surprise, however, since even bonus dormitat Homerus. 

"If the sojourn in Egypt had lasted 430 years, instead of 210 or 215, 
then 360 years must have intervened between the birth of G-ilead and the 
Exodus ; and we should have to suppose that G-ilead had a son, Hepher, 
when 180 years old, and Hepher also had a son, Zelophehad, when 180 
years old, that so Zelophehad might even have been born at the time of 
the Exodus, and been able to have full-grown daughters, as the story 
implies, at the end of the forty years' wanderings." 

But why must Zelophehad be just ' born at the time of the Exodus ?' 
He may have been, for all that appears, forty years of age, or older still, 
and then his father and grandfather need only have been 160 at the birth 
of their respective children. The author of an arithmetic ought to have 
been more exact. 

f From 1 Kings vi. 1 it appears that the 4th year ot Solomon's reign 
was the 480th after the departure from Egypt ; from this must be deducted 
the 40 years spent in the wilderness, the length of David's life, which is 
not certainly known, and 4 years of the reign of Solomon. 



138 THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 

or else eacli parent was on an average between 90 and 
100 years old at the birth of his child. Fifthly, the 
genealogy of Moses and Aaron, Ex. vi. 16-20, doubtless 
contains an allusion to God's promise to Abraham, that 
his seed should return to Canaan in the fourth genera- 
tion. This is to be found, not in the number of its links, 
but in the indication which it affords of their length. 
We are told, ver. 16, that the years of the life of Levi 
were 137, ver. 18, those of Kohath, 133, ver. 20, those 
of Amram, 137. We have before estimated these gene- 
rations at 100 years each; if, upon the evidence fur- 
nished by this genealogy, we reckon them at 130, then 
three generations would be 390 years. And in the 
fourth generation the people not only left Egypt, but 
completed their wanderings in the desert, and actually 
entered the promised land. So that the language of 
Gen. xv. 16 is precisely verified. 

The genealogy of Joshua, 1 Chron. vii. 22-27, is so 
troublesome to our author that he sets himself to get rid 
of it at all hazards. He first shows that upon his 
estimate of the abode in Egypt, there would not be time 
for ten generations from Joseph to Joshua; and then 
instead of concluding that his estimate is wrong insists 
that the genealogy is incredible. 

" Again, according to the chronicler, ' Elishama, the son of Ammihud,' 
was the grandfather of Joshua. But ' Elishama, the son of Ammihud,' 
was himself the captain of the host of Ephraim, Num. ii. 18, about a year 
after his grandson, Joshua, had commanded the whole Hebrew force which 
fought with Amalek, Ex. xvii. 8-16, which also is hardly credible." 

We find no difficulty in believing that a man and his 
grandfather might both be in active duty at the same 
time ; and we are surprised that it should trouble Colenso, 
when on the very next page he argues from it as a fact 



THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 139 

that Joseph was living at the birth of Ammihud, his 
great-great-grandson, Gen. 1. 23. 

" In vers. 22, 23, we have this most astonishing fact stated, that Ephrainc 
himself, after the slaughter by the men of Gath of his descendants in the 
seventh generation, ■ mourned many days,' and then married again, and 
had a son Beriah, who was the ancestor of Joshua /' 

The passage on which he professes to base this most 
extraordinary and absurd misrepresentation is the fol- 
lowing : 

"And the sons of Ephraim: Shuthelah and Bered his son, and Tahath 
his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son, and Zabad his son, and 
Shuthelah his son, and Ezer and Elead, whom the men of Gath that were 
born in that land slew, because they came down to take away their cattle. 
And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and his brethren came to 
comfort him. And when he went in to his wife, she conceived and bare 
a son, and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house." 

There is a possible corroboration of the circumstance 
here referred to in 1 Chron. viii. 13, whence it appears 
that certain descendants of Benjamin, ancestors of the 
subsequent settlers in Ajalon, ' drove away the inhabitants 
of Gath.' But apart from this, Ezer and Elead, who were 
slain, were not sons of the seventh generation, but the 
immediate children of Ephraim, and are to be connected 
directly with the first Shuthelah, the intervening names 
which trace the descent from Shuthelah forming a paren- 
thesis. Bertheau, whose proclivities are anything but 
favourable to the truth and inspiration of the Scripture 
history, and who gives a mythical explanation of this 
very passage, nevertheless remarks upon it in his com- 
mentary on Chronicles : 

" The descendants of Shuthelah are traced through seven generations, 
in which the name Shuthelah recurs and the name Tahath is found twice 



140 THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH GENERATION. 

The two, which are named last, Ezer and Elead, must be regarded as sons 
of Ephraim and continue the series begun with Shuthelah, in ver. 20." 

Such reckless misstatements on the part of the Bishop, 
compel us to think, that he has adopted a very singular 
mode of propitiating the " strong practical love of truth 
in his fellow-countrymen, whether Clergy or Laity," to 
which as he declares (p. 18) he makes his appeal. 

The Targum relates, that Ezer and Elead were the 
victims of a premature and unsuccessful attempt to take 
Palestine, into which they were betrayed by a misinter- 
pretation of the promise to Abraham. We are not able 
to verify the truth of this tradition ; but it would be 
curious if these sons of Ephraim had fallen into the 
Bishop's mistake of reckoning the four generations as 
four links in the chain of descent — Jacob — Joseph — 
Ephraim — Ezer— and paid the penalty of their error with 
their lives. 



CHAPTER XY. 

THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES AT THE TIME OF THii 

EXODUS. 

" The twelve sons of Jacob had between them 53 sons, that is, on the 
average 4£ each. Let us suppose that they increased in this way from 
generation to generation. Then in the first generation, that of Kohath, 
there would be 54 males, (according to the story, 53, or rather only 51, 
since Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan, v. 12, without issue,) — in 
the second, that of Amram, 243, — in the third, that of Moses and Aaron, 
1,094, — and in the fourth, that of Joshua and Eleazar, 4,923 ; that is to 
say, instead of 600,000 warriors in the prime of life, there could not have 
been 5,000." 

Upon this we remark in the first place, that if this 
result be accepted, the difficulty will only be shifted 
without being removed. It has been seen in a former 
chapter, that nothing is more certain in the history of 
Israel, than that the people emigrated from Egypt to the 
promised land, and took possession of the latter by the 
forcible expulsion of its former occupants. Now if 
Joshua accomplished this with but five thousand men, he 
must have been attended with such a divine blessing as 
could with equal ease have effected a miraculous multi- 
plication of the people in Egypt. 

Secondly, The ratio of increase, which is assumed, is 
based on a very limited survey of facts, and these not 
impartially selected but artfully chosen from such as are 



142 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

most favourable to the result which it is desired to estab- 
lish. If Jacob's own family of twelve sons had been 
made the standard, his 53 grandsons would have had 
1,099.008 male descendants of the fourth generation 
alone, not to speak of those surviving from preceding 
generations; and 1,000,000 males is all that Colenso 
himself supposes that the account in Exodus calls for. 
Besides, his estimate is derived from the state of things 
during the period of waiting and of expectancy, and not 
that of the actual fulfilment of the promise. In order to 
train the faith of the patriarchs, the chosen seed was 
during the first stage of its existence restricted to a very 
slender increase. The proper time for it to develope 
itself to a nation did not begin till Jacob went down into 
Egypt. A man plants a young apple tree, and in its 
fourth year perhaps gathers two or three apples from it. 
Here Colenso would come in with his Arithmetic and 
say, ' If it yields three apples in four years, how long will 
it take to vield a bushel?' The owner of the tree would 
probably reply to his calculations, that its bearing season 
had not yet come. 

Thirdly, the assumption of but four generations in the 
sense here put upon the term from the descent into Egypt 
to the Exodus is an error, as was shown in the last 
chapter. Even upon the theory that the children of 
Israel were but 215 years in Egypt, this requires 72 
years for a generation, for Colenso counts Jacob's grand- 
sons who went down with him the first, and those of the 
age of Joshua and Eleazar the fourth. But let this pass. 
The children of Israel were 430 years in Egypt instead 
of 215. Double the number of generations, and at the 
rate of increase which he adopts himself, the males of the 
eighth generation will amount to 2,018,786, twice as many 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 143 

consequently as the account in Exodus requires for all 
the males then living. 

In order to set the statements of Moses in a still 
more unfavourable light, the following hypothesis is sug- 
gested : — 

" Supposing the 51 males of the first generation (Kohath's) to have had 
each on the average three sons, and so on, we shall find the number of 
males in the second generation (Amram's) 153, in the third (Aaron's) 459, 
and in the fourth (Eleazar's) 13YT, — instead of 600,000." 

But according to the Bishop's own figures Moses is 
correct again, if we bear in mind that the residence in 
Egypt lasted 430 years and allow 48 years, which is 
surely long enough, for a generation. Then counting 
Kohath's generation the first, the tenth generation alone* 
without allowing for any survivors from those which 
preceded it would amount to 1,043,199 males. 

In a subsequent chapter (pp. 172, 173,) he presents 
another view of the case. 

" Assume that the Hebrew population increased, like that of England, 
at the rate of 23 per cent, in 10 years, then reckoniug the males as about 
half the entire population,-}- we shall find that the 51 males in Gen. xlvi. 
would have only increased in 215 years to 4,375, instead of 1,000,000." 

If we correct this estimate by substituting 430 years in 
place of 215, and 66 as the number of male-members of 
Jacob's family who went down into Egypt in place of 51, 
we shall find that even upon the rate of increase in an old 
and populous country like England, the Israelites would 

* According to 1 Chron. vii. 22-21, Joshua was the tenth, as Ephraim 
was the first, from Joseph. If any links have been omitted from the 
genealogy, as is possible, to say the least, he belonged to a later generation 
still. 

\ No allowance is made for this in the Bishop's calculation ; the number, 
which he gives, represents the males simply, and must be doubled if the 
entire population is demanded. And the algebraic formula for its deter- 
mination is not 51 (1.23) ai # as he states it, but 2 x 51 (1.23) 41 # 



144 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

have amounted to 484,689 males at the time of the 
Exodus. If, however, we adopt instead the rate of 
increase in the United States, which on an average from 
1790 to 1850 was 34$ per cent, every ten years, they 
would have amounted to the prodigious number of 
22,625,739 males, which is 22 times greater than the 
account in Exodus requires us to suppose. It does not 
seem, therefore, that the statements of Moses are so 
incredible after all. 

The theory of the growth of population is a very 
intricate subject, and involves many difficult and delicate 
questions. In order to treat the multiplication of the 
Israelites in Egypt understandingly, we would need to be 
informed minutely of many things in their condition and 
habits of life, of which we are profoundly ignorant. It 
cannot be dismissed, however, by imperiously pronounc- 
ing it impossible. The considerations already presented, 
drawn from computations which Colenso himself allows, 
or from modern analogies patent to all, are sufficient to 
show, that there is no natural impossibility in the case. 
The precise course of things we cannot trace in all its 
steps for each of the requisite data. The following 
estimate by Keil,* presents a moderate and rational view 
of the case upon the basis of the facts as recorded. 

" If we deduct from the seventy souls, who went down into Egypt, the 
patriarch Jacob, his twelve sons, Dinah, and Serah the daughter of Asher, 
and in addition the three sons of Levi, the four grandsons of Judah and 
Benjamin [Asher?] and those grandsons of Jacob who probably died 
without male offspring, inasmuch as their descendants do not occur among 
the families of Israel (see Num. xxvi.), there will remain forty-one grand- 
sons of Jacob (besides the Levites) who founded families. If now. 
according to 1 Chron. vii. 20, etc., where ten or eleven generations are 

* Biblischer Commentar iiber die Bucher Mose's, I. p. 392. 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 145 

named from Ephraim to Joshua, we reckon forty years to a generation, 
the tenth generation of the forty-one grandsons of Jacob would be born 
about the 400th year of the residence in Egypt, and consequently be about 
twenty years old at the Exodus. Supposing that in the first six of these 
generations every married couple had on an average three sons and three 
daughters, and in the last four generations each married couple had two 
sons and two daughters, there would have been in the tenth generation, 
about the 400th year after the descent into Egypt, 478,224 sons, who 
could be over twenty years of age at the Exodus, whilst 125,326 men of 
the ninth generation might be still living, and consequently, 478,224 -f 
125,326 = 603,550 men over twenty years old could leave Egypt." 

Besides what has already been said, three additional 
considerations should be taken into the account in esti- 
mating the Mosaic record upon this subject. 

The first is, the promised blessing of God. Colenso, 
indeed, ventures the statement, (p. 162.) 

""We have no reason whatever, from the data furnished by the sacred 
books themselves, to assume thai they had families materially larger than 
those of the present day." 

And after having said this he tells us four pages later, 
that according to the data of the sacred books " we must 
suppose that each man had forty-six children (twenty- 
three of each sex), and each of these twenty-three sons 
had forty-six children, and so on !" This is of course a 
grievous misrepresentation ; but it is in the face of his 
own words nevertheless. 

The burden of the promises to the patriarchs was the 
immense multiplication of their seed, Gren. xiii. 16, xxii. 
17, xlvi. 3. And how marvellously these were fulfilled, 
appears not only from the actual numbers as they are 
recorded, but from such statements as Ex. i. 7. ' And 
the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abun- 
dantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty ; 
and the land was filled with them.' And though this 

7 



146 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

surprising increase excited the jealous hostility of the 
king of Egypt, and measures were adopted to check it, 
these were without avail. Yer. 12, 'The more they 
afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew,' ver. 
20. ' The people multiplied and waxed very mighty.' 

The second consideration is, that it has been tacitly 
assumed thus far, that all of Jacob's descendants, who 
were living at the time of going down into Egypt, were 
included in the seventy souls, Gen. xlvi. 27. But in all 
probability he had daughters and granddaughters, who 
are not named in this list. On this point Colenso ob- 
serves : 

" It is certainly strange that, among all the sixty -nine children and 
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Jacob, who went down with 
him into Egypt, there should be only one daughter mentioned, and one 
granddaughter. The very numbering of these two among the ' seventy 
souls' shows that the females ' out of the loins of Jacob' were not omitted 
intentionally.' 1 ' 1 

"It is certain that the writer intends it to be understood that these 
seventy were the only persons, and these tivo the only females, who had at 
that time been born in the family of Jacob. And though the fact itself of 
this wonderful preponderance of males may seem very strange, and would 
be so indeed in actual history ; it is only another indication of the unbis- 
torical character of the whole account." 

"We are of the Bisho'p's opinion so far as this, that we 
too would think it very strange, if among sixty-nine 
children and grandchildren there was but one daughter, 
and one granddaughter. We are also inclined to go 
with him one step further, and think that this could not 
have been so. But we differ from him in this, that we 
do not believe that Moses meant to represent that it was 
so. Especially after what Colenso himself tells us of an- 
other family register, though he at the same time tries to 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 147 

save the credit of his former unproved statement by dint 
of confident assertion : 

" The females appear to be omitted purposely in Ex. vi. (as we see by 
the omission of Amram's [Levi's ?] daughter, Jochebed), though they could 
not have been omitted in Gen. xlvi., as we have seen above." 

If Jochebed's name could be " omitted purposely" in 
the account of Levi's children, Ex. vi. 16, why may the 
names of daughters not have been omitted elsewhere ? 
And why is it not more reasonable to suppose that they 
were omitted purposely, than to declare the " whole 
account" " un historical," because such names do not 
appear ? In all the genealogies of the Bible very few 
daughters are mentioned, and whenever any are spoken 
of, it always appears to be for some special reason. The 
rule is, to omit them for the reason that they were not 
regarded as constituting heads of families. And hence, 
Num. xxvii. 4, the daughters of Zelophehad feared that 
the name of their father would 'be done away from 
among his family, because he had no son.' 

That a like omission occurred in Jacob's family register, 
Gren. xlvi., is probable, 1st. From the general analogy of 
genealogies and family lists already mentioned. 2d. 
From the omission of other female members of the family, 
as Jacob's sons' wives, ver. 26. 3d. This is perhaps inti- 
mated in ver. 23, ' and the sons of Dan, Hushim.' The 
plural ' sons' seems to imply that Dan had more than 
one child, and yet only one is mentioned ; why were the 
others omitted, unless because they were daughters ? The 
choice lies between this understanding of it, and sup- 
posing that he had one or more sons subsequently born 
in Egypt, or that the plural ' sons' is used instead of the 
singular. 

The fact that a daughter and granddaughter are men- 



148 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

tioned does not prove that others were not passed over. 
There may have been special reasons, why these should 
not be named which did not apply to the rest. Dinah's 
unhappy notoriety might account for the mention of the 
name. Or, there may be a designed significance in in- 
cluding one daughter, probably the first, of each genera- 
tion in this primary register of Israel. As we have seen 
that there was a symbolic meaning in its number seventy, 
is it too much to imagine that these two specimen names 
taken from among the female members of Jacob's house- 
hold had a mystic import too ? These also are of Israel. 
As the number seventy points forward to the time when 
there shall be ' neither Jew nor Greek,' may not this other 
feature of the register have been intended to prefigure 
the great gospel fact that ( there is neither male nor 
female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus ?' Gal. iii. 28. 
A third consideration is, that the household or retinue 
of the patriarch was still further enlarged by numerous 
servants. The bond and the free were blended in Israel, 
a fact which also had its significance for the future, 1 Cor. 
xii. 13. The servants of Abraham are repeatedly spoken 
of, Gen. xii. 5, 16, xiii. 7, xx. 14, xxiv. 35 ; that these 
were possessed by him in great numbers, appears from 
his having 318, Gen. xiv. 14, who were trained, and 
whom he could arm. We also read of Isaac's herdmen, 
Gen. xxvi. 20, and of his 'great store of servants,' ver. 
14. And while Jacob was still engaged with Laban, it 
is said, Gen. xxx. 43, ' The man increased exceedingly, 
and had much cattle, and maid-servants and men-servants, 
and camels, and asses.' Also, in his message to his bro- 
ther Esau, he spake of his men-servants and his women- 
servants, xxxii. 5. Comp. ver. 7, 16. And the attack 
upon the city of Shechem by Simeon and Levi, xxxiv. 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 14:9 

25-29, certainly was not made single-handed. Now 
when Jacob and his family took down into Egypt ' their 
flocks and their herds and all thai they had, 1 xlv. 10, xlvii. 
1, how can this possibly be understood otherwise than as 
including the servants which Jacob procured of his own, 
as well as those which he inherited from his father ? 

It is a mistake to overlook the fact that the patriarchs 
were really such. We must not conceive of them as 
wandering about with an insignificant household of two, 
three, or a dozen. They were heads of numerous and 
powerful communities. Abraham is addressed, Gen. 
xxiii. 6, as a l mighty prince' (lit. prince of God) ; and he 
made a successful attack upon a band of pillaging inva- 
ders, avenging the injury done his kinsman, and driving 
them beyond the borders of the land, xiv. 14, etc. The 
king of the Philistines, whose army is incidentally men- 
tioned, Gen. xx vi. 26, said to Isaac, ' Thou art much 
mightier than we,' ver. 16. Such, in fact, was the greatness 
of the patriarchal community, that Joseph could expect to 
be understood by an Egyptian when he called Canaan 
1 the land of the Hebrews,' Gen. xl. 15. 

The analogy of collateral tribes or nations may further 
confirm the view which is here taken. Esau, when he 
met Jacob returning from Padan-Aram, was at the head 
of 400 men, Gen. xxxiii. 1. This was a part of the band 
which he had gathered around him, and from which the 
nation of Edom was derived. Accordingly, all his grand- 
sons were dukes, xxxvi. 15, as the sons of Ishmael were 
princes, xxv. 16. And thus we read of 'a company of 
Ishmaelites ' as early as the days of Jacob, xxxvii. 25. 

Now, with these facts before us, what are we to say of 
the fitness of a man to comment upon the Pentateuch or 
its history who can talk in the following manner (p. 176), 



150 THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

It is offered in reply to a suggestion of Kurtz substan- 
tially agreeing with what has been said above. 

"(i) There is no word or indication of any such a cortege having accom- 
panied Jacob into Egj~pt. 

" (ii) There is no sign even in Gen. xxxii, xxxiii, to which Kurtz refers, 
where Jacob meets with his brother Esau, of his having any such a body 
of servants. 

'• (hi) If he had had so many at his command, it is hardly likely that he 
would have sent his darling Joseph, at seventeen years of age, to go, all 
alone and unattended, wandering about upon the veldt in search of his 
brethren. 

" (iv) These are also spoken of as 'feeding their flocks,' and seem to 
have had none of these ' thousands ' with them, to witness their ill-treat- 
ment of their brother and report it to their father. 

" (v) Nothing is said about any of these servants coming down with the 
sons of Jacob to buy corn in Egypt, on either of their expeditions. 

" (vi) Rather, the whole story implies the contrary, — ' they speedily took 
down every man his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack,' 
— ' then they rent their clothes, and laded every man his as3, and returned 
to the city, 1 — ' we are brought in, that he may seek occasion against us, 
and take us for bondmen, and our asses,'' not a word being said about ser- 
vants.'' 

" (vii) In fact, their eleven sacks* would have held but a very scanty sup- 
ply of food for one years consumption of so many starving 'thousands.' 

" (viii) The flocks and herds did not absolutely require any 'servants' to 
tend them, in the absence of Jacob's sons, since there remained at home, 
with the patriarch himself, his thirty-nine children and grand-children, as 
well as his sons' wives." 

What has all this rigmarole to do with the subject, and 
how does it disprove one of the evidences already pre- 
sented of the possession by Jacob of numerous servants ? 
Because there is no expTess mention of servants in the 

* So far from Joseph thinking that " eleven sacks" would answer for 
" one year's consumption," he sent ' ten asses laden with the good things 
of Egypt, and ten she-asses laden with corn and bread and meat for his 
father by the way,' Gen. xlv. 23, — just to support him during the journey 
down from Canaan; and this in addition to the provision specially given 
to his brethren for the like purpose, ver. 21. 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 151 

two trips which Jacob's sons made into Egypt to buy 
corn, therefore they were unaccompanied by servants, 
therefore they possessed no servants! In 2 Chron. 
xxx vi. 6, 7, we read — 

' Against him (Jehoiakim) came up Nebuchadnezzar 
king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him 
to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels 
of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and put them in 
his temple at Babylon.' 

We suppose that the Bishop understands this passage 
to mean that Nebuchadnezzar came up alone, since there 
is no mention of any army, or even of any attendants, 
and that he personally fettered the king of Judah, and 
carried off the vessels of the house of the Lord. 

These servants of the patriarchs were circumcised, Gen. 
xvii. 12, 13, and thus brought within the pale of the 
covenant. They were regarded as forming part of their 
household, vs. 23, 27, and were to be instructed to ' keep 
the way of the Lord,' Gen. xviii. 19. The circumcised 
stranger and the native Israelite were to be precisely on 
a par in all religious privileges, Ex. xii. 48, 49, Lev. xix. 
33, 34, Num. ix. 14, xv. 14-16, Deut. xxix. 11. Under 
these circumstances, the distinction between the family 
proper and the household, between the children and ser- 
vants of the patriarchs, would not be so broad as modern 
usages might lead us to imagine, and under the pressure 
of a common bondage, to which they were subjected in 
Egypt, might easily be done away altogether. 

Strangers living apart in their independent households 
might attach themselves to the people of God. They 
were at liberty to embrace the covenant of Israel, submit 
to its requisitions, and share its blessings, and were 
thenceforward reckoned as belonging to the seed of Abra- 



152 THE KTTMBER OF ISBAETJTE8 

ham. ' Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy 
brother. Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because 
thou wast a stranger in his land. The children that are 
begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the 
Lord in their third generation,' Deut. xxiii. 7, 8. And 
it is remarked as a peculiar provision, based on special 
reasons, that ' an Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter 
into the congregation of the Lord;' those also were 
excluded who had been guilty of idolatrous self-mutila- 
tion, Deut. xxiii. 1 — 3. This implies, of course, the pos- 
sibility of admission in cases where there is no such 
express prohibition. The incorporation of other nations 
with Israel formed one of the standing objects of Mes- 
sianic expectation, Isa. xiv. 1, lvi. 6-8, Ezek. xlvii. 22, 
Zech. viii. 23 : it could not therefore have been contrary 
to their ancient and steadfast traditions. Now if these 
rights and privileges were accorded to foreigners gene- 
rally, how much more to those who by their relation of 
service were a] ready members of Israelitish households. 

That the patriarchs and their descendants felt it to be 
no degradation to intermarry with their servants, appears 
from the case of Abraham and Hagar, and that of Jacob 
and his two maids, Bilhah and Zilpah. Marriages with 
servants- and captives taken in war are distinctly contem- 
plated and provided for in the law, Ex. xxi. 8-9, Deut. 
xx. 14, xxi. 11. Colenso supplies us with another fact 
in point, p. 167 : 

•In 1 Chron. ii. 34, 35, we read that Sheshan, a descendant of Judah 
in the ninth generation, ' had a servant, an Eg)-ptian, whose name was 
Jarha ; and Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife, and 
she bare him Attai,' whose descendants are then traced down through 
twelve generations, and are reckoned, apparently, as Israelites of the tribe 
of Judah. From this it would seem that Hebrew girls might be married 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 153 

to foreigners, — we may suppose, proselytes, — and their children would then 
be reckoned as ' children of Israel.' " 

Such marriages, not being regarded as objectionable 
at any time, would be still more likely to occur in Egypt, 
not only because the heavy hand of oppression was 
exerted to reduce master and servant to a level ; but with 
whom else could they be contracted ? Colenso puts the 
case in the following terms, pp. 164, 165, though with a 
very different design from that with which we quote his 
language. 

" With the story of Isaac's and Esau's and Jacob's marriages before us, 
we cannot suppose that the wives of the sons of Jacob generally were 
mere heathens. Judah, indeed, took a Canaanitish woman for his wife or 
concubine, G-en. xxxviii. 2. But we must not infer that all the other 
brothers did likewise, since we find it noted as a special fact, that Simeon 
had, besides his other fiye sons, 'Shaul, the son of a Canaanitish woman,' 
Gen. xlvi. 10." 

" But, however this may have been, we must suppose that in Egypt, — 
at all events, in their later days, for a hundred years or more, from the 
time that their afflictions began, — such friends [viz. their relations in 
Haran] were not accessible. "We must conclude, then, that they either 
took as wives generally Egyptian heathen women, or else intermarried 
with one another. The former alternative is precluded by the whole tone 
and tenor of the narrative. As the object of the king was to keep down 
their numbers, it is not to be supposed that he would allow them to take 
wives freely from among his own people, or that the women of Egypt, (at 
least, those of the generation of Amram, which gave birth to Moses, and 
after it), would be willing generally to associate their lot with a people so 
abject and oppressed as the Hebrews." 

In all probability long before the term of the Egyptian 
residence was reached, all distinction between the direct 
descendants of the patriarchs and their several retinues 
had ceased. The posterity of all blended together con- 
stituted the 600,000 men who went up out of Egypt 
under the leadership of Moses. So that the question in 

7* 



154: THE NUMBER OF ISRAELITES 

actual fact is not how could this enormous increase have 
arisen from 70 souls, but rather from several vast house- 
holds of dependents and retainers, whose numbers we 
have no means of actually estimating. 

It might be added to this that considerable numbers 
of the Egyptians may have attached themselves to Israel, 
not as " heathen," but won by the splendour of the pro- 
mises made to the chosen seed, and the glorious prospects 
before them. This is quite as possible as that they should 
be deterred by their externally "abject and oppressed" 
condition. In fact we read of a ' mixed multitude,' Ex. 
xii. 38, Num. xi. 4, which went up with them. And 
mention is made Lev. xxiv. 10, of 'the son of an 
Israelitish woman, whose father was an Egyptian.' 
1 Chron. iv. 18, speaks of 'Bithiah the daughter of 
Pharaoh,' as married to a man of Judah ;* her very name, 
which signifies daughter of Jehovah, implies that she was 
a convert to the worship of the true God. Moses also 
married an Ethiopian woman, Num. xii. 1. 

All this does not conflict with the language of Deut. 
x, 22,- ' Thy fathers went down into Egypt with three- 
score and ten persons ; and now the Lord thy God hath 
made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.' Or with 
Heb. xi. 12, ' Therefore sprang there even of one, and 
him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in 
multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea-shore 
innumerable.' It is obvious that such general and rhe- 
torical statements are not to be pressed to the letter, any 
more than the figures which they contain are to be abso- 
lutely pressed. They must find their more precise 



* The date of this event is uncertain. Bat its having taken place at 
any time is sufficient for the purpose for which it is here adduced. 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 155 

explanation and limitation in the facts as presented in 
detail elsewhere ; and some of these facts have been exhi- 
bited above. The lineal descendants of the patriarchs 
formed the nucleus about which their dependents gravi- 
tated, and gave form and character to the nation thus 
created. The whole composed 'the house of Israel/ and 
were included amongst ' the seed of Abraham ' by the 
organic law upon which that seed was originally consti- 
tuted, Gen. xvii. 9-14. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE DANITES AND LEVITES AT THE TIME OF THE 

EXODUS. 

But if the increase of the entire people can be thus 
satisfactorily accounted for, how is it with the individual 
tribes ? 

u Dan in the first generation has one son, Hushim, Gen. xlvi. 23 ; and, 
that he had no more born to him in the land of Egypt, and, therefore, had 
only one son, appears from Num. xxvi. 42, where the sons of Dan consist 
of only one family. Hence we may reckon that in the fourth generation 
he would have had 27 warriors descended from him, instead of 62,700, as 
they are numbered in Num. ii. 26, increased to 64,400 in Num. xxvi. 43. 

" In order to have had this number born to him, we must suppose that 
Dan's one son, and each of his sons and grandsons, must have had about 
80 children of both sexes. 

"We may observe also that the offspring of the one son of Dan, 62,700, 
is represented as nearly double that of the ten sons of Benjamin, 35,400, 
Num. ii. 23." 

Dan may have had daughters whose descendants were 
reckoned as belonging to their brother's family. The 
same would have been the case if he had had other sons 
born to him in Egypt, for, as we saw in Chapter I., only 
those descendants of the patriarchs who were living at 
the time of the descent into Egypt had the right of 
giving names to families. The old fallacy about 'the 
fourth generation ' is here repeated again. If Jacob's 



THE DANITES AND LEVITES AT THE EXODUS. 157 

posterity could swell to upwards of 600,000, Dan's 
62,700 need occasion no trouble. 

The fact that the numbers of each tribe in the days 
of Moses do not preserve the proportion of the sons of 
the several patriarchs living at the time of the migration 
to Egypt, appears to Colenso to cast doubt upon the 
truth of the narrative. To our minds it is a strong confir- 
mation of its truth. It shows that these numbers have 
not been artificially made up. If they had been, they 
would have been framed into a more exact correspon- 
dence. And yet, after all, there is no reason or proba- 
bility in the expectation that the ratio existing in a dozen 
families 430 years ago (about the time when Columbus 
was born) would be preserved, or even approximated in 
their descendants to-day. This free variety is as accord- 
ant with nature and with the facts of observation as it 
is unlike fiction. 

The following tabular statement of the descendants of 
Jacob may present the matter to the eye in a convenient 
form. 





Gen. x 


hi 




Num. xxvi. 


Num. i. 


Num. xxvi. 




Sons and Grandsons. 


Families. 


1st Census. 


2d Census. 


Reuben 


4 






4 


46,500 


43,730 


Simeon 


6 






5 


59,300 


22,200 


Levi 


3 






3 


22,000* 


23,000* 


Judah 


3 + 




2 


5 


■74,600 


76,500 


Tssachar 


4 






4 


54,400 


64,300 


Zebulun 


3 






3 


57,400 


60,500 


Gad 


1 






7 


45,650 


40,500 


Asher 


4 + 




2 


5 


41,500 


53,400 



* The Levites were numbered from a month old and upward, and are 
not included in the general summation of the children of Israel given in 
Num. i. 46, xxvi. 51. There were, as appears from Num. iv. 48, 8,580 
between 30 and 50 years of age. The rest of the tribes were numbered 
from 20 years old and upward. 



158 THE DANITES AND LEYITES 





Gen. xlvi. Num. xxvi. 


Num. 1. 


Num xxvi. 


Sons and Grandsons. Families. 


l6t Census. 


2nd Census. 


Joseph 


„ . ( Manasseh 
2 viz. < _ , . 
( Ephraim 


8 


32,200 


52,700 


4 


40,500 


32,500 


Benjamin 


10 


% 


35,400 


45,600 


Dan 


1 


1 


62,700 


64,400 


Naphtali 


4 


4 


53,400 


45,400 



Total 51 + 4 60 625,550 624,730 

A fresh ground of complaint is found in the genealogy 
of the three sons of Levi — Gershon, Kohath, Merari. 

"(i) These three increased in the second (Amram's) generation to 8, (not 
to 9, as it would have been, if they had had each three sons on the ave- 
rage,) viz. the sons of Kohath 4, of Gershon 2, of Merari 2, Ex. vi. 11-19. 

" (ii) The 4 sons of Kohath increased in the third (Aaron's) generation to 
8, (not to 1 2,) viz. the sons of Amram (Moses and Aaron) 2, of Izhar 3, 
of Uzziel 3, Ex. vi. 20-22. If we now assume that the two sons of Ger- 
shon, and the two sons of Merari increased in the same proportion, that is, 
to 4 and 4 respectively, then all the male Levites of the third generation 
would have been 16. 

" (iii) The two sons of Amram increased in the fourth (Eleazar's) genera- 
tion to 6, viz. the sons of Aaron 4, (of whom, however, two died, Num. 
iii. 2, 4) and of Moses 2. Assuming that all the 16 of the third genera- 
tion increased in the same proportion, then all the male Levites of the 
generation of Eleazar would have been 48, or rather 44, if we omit the 
4 sons of Aaron who were reckoned as Priests. Thus the whole number 
of Levites, who would be numbered at the first census, would be only 44, 
viz. 20 Kohathites, 2 Gershonites, 12 Merarites, instead of 8,580, as they 
are numbered in Num. iv. 48, viz. 2,150 Kohathites, 2,630 Gershonites, and 
3,200 Merarites, v. 36, 40, 44." 

The Bishop seems to have expected to find in the 
genealogies the name of every Israelite who was living 
at the time of the exodus. If the whole 8,580 are not 
put down in the genealogies, they could not have existed. 
Upon this principle we would be obliged to have a book 
as large or larger than a Eew York directory, simply to 
record the names of the people. 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 159 

But again, Colenso himself shows us that these geneal- 
ogies do not always aim at completeness, even in respect 
to those families which have a place in them. 

" In Ex. vi., while the sons of Amram, Izhar, and Uzziel are mentioned, 
no sons are assigned to their brother Hebron. In Num. hi. 27, however, 
we read of 'the family of the Hebronites;' and, in 1 Chron. xxiii. 19, 
four sons of Hebron are mentioned. 

" So in Ex. vi. 21, 22, the sons of Izhar are three, and the sons of Uz- 
ziel, three : but in 1 Chron. xxiii. 18, 20, Izhar has only one son, and 
Uzziel, two.'' 1 

The subject seems to call for no additional remark, 
except that the fallacy of the ' fourth generation ' is here 
again at the bottom of the calculation. 

But the Bishop tries to " put the matter in another and 
yet stronger light," as follows : 

" The Amramites, numbered as Levites in the fourth (Eleazar's) genera- 
tion, were, as above, only two, viz. the two sons of Moses, the sons of 
Aaron being reckoned as Priests. Hence the rest of the Kohathites of 
this generation must have been made up of the descendants of Izhar and 
Uzziel, each of whom had three sons, Ex. vi. 21, 22. Consequently, since 
all the Kohathites of Eleazar's generation were numbered at 2,750, Num. 
iv. 36, it follows that these six men must have had between them, accord- 
ing to the Scripture story, 2,748 sons, and we must suppose about the 
same number of daughters 1"* 

We could have found a much stronger case for him 
than this. There were 8 families in the tribe of Manas- 
seh, Num. xxvi. 29-34, numbering in all 52,700 men 

* Another instance of bad faith, for it admits of no other explanation, 
is found on p. 179, where he represents Kurtz as "almost driven to des- 
pair in his attempts to get over this difficulty;" and adduces in proof a 
quotation, which, torn from its connection, might seem like a refusal to 
credit the Mosaic narrative on account of its incongruities, but which is 
really part of an argument exposing the absurdities of the opinion enter- 
tained by the Bishop that Moses belonged to the third generation from 
Levi. 



160 THE DAXTTES AND LEVTTES 

over twenty years of age. Assuming that these were 
equal, or nearly so, each family, as, for example, that of 
the Hepherites, descended from Hepher, ver. 32, must 
have numbered about 6,587. Now, we only read of 
Hepher's having one son, viz. Zelophehad, ver. 33, 
xxvii. 1 : and of him it is expressly said that he had no 
sons, but five daughters. Hence these five women, them- 
selves daughters of a man who l died in the wilderness,' 
Num. xxvii. 3, must have had between them, according 
to the Scripture story, 6,587 sons, who were upwards of 
twenty years old, and we must suppose about the same 
.number of daughters ! Clearly, arithmetic is a wonder- 
ful thing. 

Such results are to sensible minds not a proof of the 
Bishop's theorem, but a reductio ad absurdum. They 
prove not that Moses has blundered in this egregious 
way, but simply that Moses and Aaron do not belong to 
the next generation from Amram, and that they did not 
compose the whole of his descendants ; and so Zelophe- 
had could not have been the immediate and only 
descendant of Hepher. The Bishop is simply mistaken 
as to the term of the residence in Egypt, and the number 
of generations there ; that is all. 

The cavil based on the fact that the tribe of Levi had 
increased but 1,000 in the interval of thirty-eight years, 
which elapsed between the first and second census, is as 
groundless as those which we have been considering. 
There is not a particle of proof for his assertion that Levi 
was not included in the curse pronounced on all the 
tribes, that the men who were upwards of twenty, on 
leaving Egypt, should die in the wilderness. He speaks 
of Eleazar as surviving Joshua, Josh. xxiv. 33, but we 
do not know that he was over the fatal age. Aaron 



AT THE TIME OF THE EXODUS. 161 

himself was debarred from Canaan, like all the rest. 
Some of the tribes increased in the interval, others 
decreased, shewing the various severity of the plagues 
with which they were from time to time visited. While 
most of the tribes remained somewhere in the region of 
their original numbers, Manasseh increased from 32,200 
to 52,700, that is 63$ per cent, in 38 years or 13£ per 
cent, in 10 years. Inasmuch as " the population of Eng- 
land increases at the rate of about 23 per cent, in 10 
years," this rate will not be esteemed exorbitant. On 
the other hand Simeon fell off from 59,300 to 22,200, 
showing what terrible ravages the pestilence had made 
there ; as a prince of Simeon was prominent in the affair 
of Baal-peor, Num. xxv. 14, that tribe had doubtless 
suffered most severely in the plague, ver. 9, which shortly 
preceded the second census, xxvi. 1. 

The chapter which we are reviewing, fitly closes with 
the following extraordinary paragraph : 

"What are we to say of the whole story of the Exodus, of the camping 
and marching of the Israelites, of their fighting with Amalek and Midian, 
of the 44 Levites slaying 3,000 of the children of Israel, Ex. xxxii. 28? 
.... How were the 20 Kohathites, the 12 G-ershonites, and the 12 Mera- 
rites, to discharge the offices assigned to them in N. iii. iv., in carrying the 
Tabernacle and its vessels, — to do, in short, the work of 8,580 men, Num. iv. 
48 ? "What were these forty-four people, with the two Priests, and their 
families, to do with the forty-eight cities assigned to them, Num. xxxv. 7 ? 
How could the Tabernacle itself have been erected, when the silver spent 
upon it was contributed, as we are expressly told, by a poll-tax of half a 
skekel, Ex. xxxviii. 26, levied upon the whole body of 603,550 warriors, 
who did not exist ?" 

Is not this the climax of outrageous misrepresentation ? 
Where does Moses say anything of 44 Levites, 20 
Kohathites, etc., doing what is here imputed to them ? It 



162 THE DANITES AND LEVTTES AT THE EXODUS. 

would be a no more serious distortion, if we were to sub- 
stitute for Colenso, Bishop of Natal, the anagram N. B. 
Choose fatall poison, and argue from that the deleterious 
nature of the tenets which he has chosen to adopt, or 
which he offers to the choice of others. 



CHAPTEK XVII. 



THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS AT THE EXODUS COMPARED 
WITH the: 
FOR THEM. 



WITH THEIR DUTIES, AND WITH THE PROVISION MADE 



The chapter of Colenso, with the above heading, is a 
repetition of his old method already practised ad nauseam 
of framing a theory at variance with the possibilities of 
the case, and then representing the Mosaic narrative as 
incredible, because his superficially formed theory of its 
meaning is so. He finds that the priests at the time of 
the Exodus were too few to have offered the numerous 
sacrifices, and performed the other services enjoined by 
the ritual. Any other man, under these circumstances, 
would have felt it incumbent upon him to institute a 
careful scrutiny into the facts of the case, and ascertain 
by the help of all the hints which can be gathered, how 
the matter was really managed. But the Bishop is above 
all such investigations. He is ready with his conclusion : 
the Pentateuch is " unhistorical." 

Upon this subject we commend the following con- 
siderations to candid readers : — 

1. The ritual prescriptions of the Pentateuch are 
largely designed for the future. They were not intended, 
as their very nature shows in a multitude of cases, tp 



164: THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS, 

come into developed operation in the wilderness, but 
anticipate the time when the people should be settled in 
the peaceable and secure possession of Canaan. This is 
so plain that the Bishop himself admits it, p. 190. 

" Then follow other directions, by which it is provided that the Priest 
should have also ' the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of 
the wheat, the first fruits of them, which they shall offer unto Jehovah,' 
and ■ whatsoever is first ripe in the land ;' which laws we may suppose 
were intended only to be applied, when the people had become settled on 
their farms in the land of Canaan, as also the law, ver. 25-29, for their 
receiving also a tenth of the tithes of corn and wine and oil, which were 
to be given for the support of the Levites." 

Again (on p. 188,) he refers to another case, in which, 
if he states the facts correctly, the same inference must 
be drawn, although the Bishop is of another mind. 

" Turtle-doves or young pigeons are prescribed as a lighter and easier 
offering for the poor to bring ; they are spoken of, therefore, as being in 
abundance and within the reach of every one. .... In the desert, it 
would have been equally impossible for the rich or poor to procure them." 

Colenso infers that "such laws as these could not have 
been written by Moses, but must have been composed at 
a later age, when the people were already settled in 
Canaan, and the poor who could not afford a lamb could 
easily provide themselves with pigeons." We infer 
either that the Bishop is mistaken about the scarcity of 
pigeons in the wilderness, or that this provision of the 
law was not to take effect until the people were living 
where pigeons could be had. 

Moses was giving law for the entire future. He had 
to contemplate the circumstances of the people, therefore, 
as they would be in time to come. The regulations, 
which were impossible in their present condition, could 



THEIR DUTIES AND THEIR PERQUISITES. 165 

of course apply to the future only. Before we give our 
assent to the Bishop's conclusion, we would like him to 
show, that according to the Mosaic record, Aaron and his 
sons actually performed or were expected to perform 
impossibilities : and that the multitudinous prescriptions 
with which it was beyond their power to comply, were 
intended to go into operation in the wilderness. 

2. Not only the language of the law, as we have seen, 
but the statements of the history show that the wandering 
in the wilderness was a provisional period, in which some 
of even the most important of the requisitions of the 
ritual were in abeyance. Thus we learn from Josh. v. 
4-7, that the rite of circumcision was suspended from the 
time the children of Israel left Egypt until they entered 
the promised land. As far as our present purpose is 
concerned it does not matter how this fundamental 
statute came to be set aside for such a length of time. 
It may be attributed to the defection and culpable neglect 
of the people, or to a divine judicial sentence which 
temporarily deprived those, who had broken God's 
covenant, of the possession of its outward seal, or to a 
divine leniency which suffered the pretermission of the 
rite in consequence of the inconvenience and hazards 
with which it would be attended in their frequent 
journeying. Upon every explanation the fact remains 
that one of the most essential rites of the Old Economy 
was wholly omitted in the wilderness. 

The prophet, Amos, v. 25, 26, implies the infrequency 
of sacrifices in this period. ( Have ye offered unto me 
sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, 
house of Israel ?' The Bishop quotes this passage as 
showing " that in the prophet's view, at all events, such 
sacrifices were required and expected of them." Perhaps 



166 THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS, 

so, and perhaps not. Some able commentators have been 
of a different opinion, supposing that the prophet is 
drawing a contrast between the paucity of the sacrifices 
expected and received from their fathers during a period 
of signal divine interposition on their behalf, and the 
degeneracy of their sons, who, with all the multitude of 
their offerings, bad nevertheless provoked the divine 
displeasure, and should suffer a signal judgment. 

But if we admit, as we are well disposed to do, that 
" in the prophet's view such sacrifices were required and 
expected," it will be still more damaging to the Bishop's 
cause. For, in the first place, even though they might 
have been "required," they were not offered: and so all 
the difficulty arising from the supposed inability of the 
priests to attend to them ceases. And, in the second 
place, we have here an unequivocal testimony on the 
part of this prophet that the house of Israel was in the 
wilderness forty years, and that sacrifices and offerings 
were " required and expected " of them there. If this 
substantial fact is true, the Pentateuch cannot be false. 

Indeed, when we consider the abundant and explicit 
references which both. Amos and Hosea, not to speak of 
the other prophets, make to the Pentateuch, their appeals 
to the facts which it records as undeniably true, their 
allusions to its statutes as of binding force and as in 
actual operation, and their citations of its very language, 
we are obliged to confess that we have here a very strong 
argument both for the Mosaic composition and the divine 
authority of the first five books of the Bible. Hosea 
and Amos are not only the oldest of the prophets whose 
writings are preserved to us, but their ministry was 
directed to the apostate kingdom of the ten tribes. This 
kingdom had been in a state of hostility with Judah 



THEIR DUTIES AND THEIR PERQUISITES. 1G7 

from the days of Kehoboam, the son of Solomon. The 
ten tribes were under the strongest possible temptation 
to deny and disown the Pentateuch, some of whose most 
stringent provisions they were by their idolatry and 
schism habitually disregarding. And yet, here we see 
from these prophets that the authority of the Pentateuch 
was acknowledged, and some of its regulations were still 
in existence among these apostates. If it was not of 
Mosaic origin, but had been concocted in Judah since 
the time of the schism, how came it to be accepted by 
the ten tribes, though it was derived from a hostile peo- 
ple, and its commands were directly in the face of their 
practice and their political interest ? No hypothesis can 
account for this, except that the Pentateuch was so 
firmly credited to be the word of God when the schism 
occurred that its hold upon the people's minds could not 
be shaken. 

And if so thorough a conviction of its truth and its 
divine authority existed in the days of Solomon, then it 
unquestionably is what it professes to be, the genuine 
production of Moses. It could not have been forged in 
the days of David, for that was too near the time of the 
schism for its real origin to have been forgotten or to 
have escaped the knowledge of those interested in 
exposing its falsity. It could not have been forged in 
the turbulent times of the Judges ; that is the very last 
period to which any one would think of referring the 
origin of such a cumbrous and minute* ceremonial sys- 
tem. It could not have been forged in the days of 
Joshua, for apart from the military character of the 
period, which would be equally unfavourable to the pro- 
duction of such a system and its imposition upon the 
people, that was too near the time of Moses ; how could 



168 



THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS, 



the volume gain credit when every adult person could 
have borne evidence to its falsity? There is no time 
between Solomon and Moses to which the origin of the 
Pentateuch can be referred. If its authority was undis- 
puted then, in the time of Solomon, it is all that it claims 
to be. 

3. The functions strictly belonging to the priests in 
the work of sacrifice were few and simple. The victim 
was slain by the offerer himself. It was prepared for 
the altar by the Levites. Other preliminaries are spoken 
of as committed to servants, 1 Sam. ii. 13-15. The 
strictly sacerdotal functions were sprinkling some of the 
blood, or applying it with the finger to the horns of the 
altar, and laying the prescribed pieces upon the altar 
fire ; and the time which this would consume in the case 
of each sacrifice would be very brief indeed. 

4. The priesthood was in a transition state in the time 
of Moses and Aaron. Sacrifices had previously been 
offered by every head of a family for his own household. 
The tribe of Levi was set apart by Moses for the sacred 
ministries of the tabernacle ; and the family of Aaron for 
the priesthood. But while the regulations prescribed in 
the Pentateuch define what the permanent law was to be, 
may not the transition have been in some respects a 
gradual one, so far at least that the Levites who were 
accepted instead of the first born of all the people may 
have been temporarily allowed to aid the priests even 
in their proper functions, if they were at any time over- 
burdened ? This would certainly have some remarkable 
analogies in its favour. Thus, Solomon in the profusion 
of his sacrifices, finding the altar inadequate, did not 
hesitate to depart from the letter of ceremonial require- 
ment by sanctifying another, 1 Kin. viii. 64, 2 Chron. 



THEIR DUTIES AND THEIR PERQUISITES. 169 

vii. 7. And on the occasion of the revived ritual zeal 
in the reign of Hezekiah, it is said, 2 Chron. xxix. 34, 
that ' the priests were too few ;' ' wherefore their brethren, 
the Levites, did help them till the work was ended.' 
Compare 2 Chron. xxxi. 2. 

The allegation that the provision made for the priests 
was out of all proportion to their numbers, also over- 
looks the fact that this was chiefly a prospective arrange- 
ment designed to secure the comfortable maintenance 
of the priests in all time 'to come, and especially when 
their numbers should have greatly increased. 

In making the charge that the portions set apart from 
the offerings for the use of the priests were more than 
they could possibly consume, Colenso has also overlooked 
the facts that they were not compelled to eat any more 
than they desired, and that these things were to be partaken 
of not only by the ' three priests,' but also by their sons, 
and in some cases, by their daughters also, and their 
entire households ; ' every one that is clean in thine house 
shall eat of it,' Num. xviii. 11 ; — and even by the Levites 
generally, as we read Deut. xviii. 1, * The priests the 
Levites and all the tribe of Levi shall have no part nor 
inheritance with Israel ; they shall eat the offerings of 
the Lord made by fire and his inheritance.' 

Since the preceding pages were in type, we learn from 
the newspapers that the Bishop has, in a subsequent 
volume just issued, announced his discovery, that the 
Pentateuch was written by the prophet Samuel. What 
the Christian world has hitherto regarded as the work of 
Moses, turns out, it seems, in the light of his investigations 
to be a summary of ancient traditions compiled by Sa- 
muel for the religious benefit of his contemporaries. 

It would have been wiser or the Bishop to have 



170 HIE NUMBER OF PRIESTS, 

adhered to the negative ground maintained in the volume 
which we have been reviewing. As long as he contented 
himself with merely finding fault with current opinions, 
without suggesting any substitute of his own, he put his 
antagonists on the defensive, and could select or vary his 
point of attack at pleasure. In venturing a positive 
assertion of his own, however, he foregoes this advantage 
and lays himself open to attack in turn. The question 
can immediately be raised, whether the view which he 
proposes possesses any advantage over that which has 
always been held — whether it may not be encumbered 
with difficulties quite as serious as that which we are 
requested to discard for its sake. 

As we have not seen this second publication of Colenso, 
we do not know the precise form of the hypothesis which 
he adopts, nor the nature of the arguments upon which 
he professes to rest it. We are not sure, for example, 
whether he regards Samuel as the author of the entire 
Pentateuch in its present form, or as one of a series of 
writers amongst whom the dissecting processes of the 
German so-called higher criticism has parcelled it. In 
either case he has made a faux pas, and will have to 
guess again. 

Having entered upon these studies so recently he may 
perhaps be pardoned for not knowing the risk he was 
running in venturing any assertion in the case. In fact 
the great trouble with that whole school of critics, whose 
humble disciple he has now become, is not in disproving 
the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. That is, upon their 
principles, an easy task. The Pentateuch cannot be the 
work of Moses, because in that case it would necessarily 
be a supernatural revelation, and a supernatural revela- 
tion is impossible. The case is prejudged, therefore, and 



THEIR DUTIES AND THEIR PERQUISITES. 171 

the whole matter settled in advance. The real trouble 
is in knowing how to dispose of the Pentateuch after they 
have taken it away from Moses. They are in much the 
same predicament as the man, to whom some inconside- 
rate friend had made the present of an elephant ; he had 
the animal on his hands and what in the world was he to 
do with it? 

The Pentateuch is here. It must have originated at 
some time. It must have been written by somebody. 
The critics tell us that Moses was not its author, and 
that it was not composed in the Mosaic age. Very well. 
When, and by whom was it written? The propound- 
ing of this question raises a Babel-like confusion in the 
host where all seemed unanimity and harmony before. 
Nothing can be more hopeless and inextricable than the 
entanglements which are thus created. Theory has suc- 
ceeded theory, and hypothesis followed hypothesis, until 
Milton's description of chaos seems to have been real- 
ized. Each phase of the subject lasts only till some 
fresh critic has had time to write a book, and substi- 
tute some new mystification of his own for that which 
had reigned previously. And the end is not yet. The 
difficulty is inherent in the subject. If the pyramids of 
Ghizeh be taken off of their base, it will require marvellous 
skill in engineering to balance them upon their apex. If 
the history of German critical hypotheses in relation to 
the Pentateuch has demonstrated any thing, it demon- 
strates that no plausible and self-consistent theory can be 
framed of the origin of the Pentateuch, which denies its com- 
position by Moses. 

As to this particular theory of the Bishop, which con- 
nects it with the name of Samuel, we cannot of course 
undertake its refutation in this place, for we have only a 



172 THE NTTMOKK OF PRIESTS, 

very indefinite notion of what the theory really is. He 
either thinks that Samuel was the author of the Penta- 
teuch in its entire compass and in its present form, or 
that while Samuel wrote certain parts of it, its piecemeal 
composition was not brought to a close by him, and was 
not finally finished, perhaps, until long afterwards. In 
the latter case, the argument maintained above still 
stands. The Pentateuch in its present form and compass 
did not even upon the Bishop's theory originate in the in- 
terval between Solomon and Moses : and he will have to 
explain how it came to possess that consideration and 
authority in the kingdom of the ten tribes, which we 
learn from Amos and Hosea that it did possess. 

If, however, Samuel was the author of the Pentateuch, 
as we now have it, he will have to explain : 

1. How the traditions, of which this is supposed to be 
a record, could have originated and have been so firmly 
credited in Israel and by Samuel himself, if they are 
utterly untrue. 

2. How a good man, as Samuel is supposed to have 
been, could have attempted to palm off a book which he 
prepared himself for the religious benefit of his contem- 
poraries, as a production of the great Hebrew legislator, 
Deut. xxxi. 9, 24. 

3. How he could succeed in making his contempora- 
ries believe that a detailed history and an extensive code 
of laws produced by himself, had not only been in ex- 
istence for ages, but had been the basis of their national 
constitution, and had all along been in the custody of the 
Priests to whom it was committed, and had been pub- 
licly read to themselves every seventh year, Deut. xxxi. 
11. 

•i. How, after opposing the wishes of the people in 



THEIR DUTIES AND THEIR PERQUISITES. 173 

their desire to have a King and remonstrating with them 
upon its sin and its impropriety, 1 Sam. viii., he could 
write a book representing the founder of the Hebrew 
State contemplating without disapproval the establish- 
ment of a kingdom, Deut. xvii. 14—20. 

5. How Samuel could be the author of a minute and 
extensive system of laws, the fundamental principle of 
which restricted the offering of sacrifices to the Aaronio 
priesthood and to the place of the sanctuary, and which 
made the ark of the covenant prominent as the centre of 
all religious service, when during nearly the whole of his 
life the ark was in obscurity, 1 Sam. vii. 1, 2 ; 2 Sam. 
vi. 4, and almost the only sacrifices of which we hear were 
offered by himself, though he was not descended from 
Aaron, 1 Sam. vii. 9, 10 ; viii. etc. etc., and these, more- 
over, were never offered at the Sanctuary. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PRIESTS AND THEIR DUTIES AT THE CELEBRATION 
OF THE PASSOVER. 

Next follows an attempt, which if we might do so 
without disrespect, we would call a very clumsy one, to 
create a difficulty without even the semblance of a 
ground for it in the statements of Moses. 

"We are told, 2 Chron. xxx. 16, xxxv. 11, that the people killed the 
Passover, but ' the Priests sprinkled the blood from their hands, and the 
Levites flayed them.' Hence, when they kept the second passover under 
Sinai, Num. ix. 5, where we must suppose that 150,000 lambs were 
killed at one time ' between the two evenings,' Ex. xii. 6, for the two mil- 
lions of people, each Priest must have had to sprinkle the blood of 50,000 
lambs in about two hours, that is, at the rate of about four hundred lambs 
every minute for two hours together." 

Because seven or eight centuries afterwards, when the 
priests formed a numerous body, they had assumed the 
charge of the whole ceremonial, as far at least as they 
were capable of doing so, therefore the three priests of 
Aaron's days must have done the same in spite of the 
physical impossibility. And this impossibility of the 
Bishop's own getting up proves not that he is mis- 
taken, but that Moses is " unhistorical." Iso further 
replv is necessary than is furnished by the admission 
(p. 202), 



THE PRIKSIS AT '111;'; CELEBRATION OF THE PASSOVER. 175 

' : It is certainly true that the references to the passover in the books of 
Exodus and. Numbers, do not appear to imply in any way that the priests 
were called into action in the celebration of this feast." 

The same remark applies likewise to the additional 
difficulty, which is pretended here, viz. that the court of 
the tabernacle did not afford space enough for the 
slaughtering of all the lambs which must have been slain 
at the passover. 

" In the time of Hezekiah and Josiah, when it was desired to keep the 
Passover strictly, 'in such sort as it was written,' 2 Chron. xxx. 5, the 
lambs were manifestly killed in the Court of the Temple. "We must sup- 
pose, then, that the Paschal lambs in the wilderness were killed in the 
Court of the Tabernacle, in accordance, in fact, with the strict injunctions 
of the Levitical Law, that all burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings, 
and trespass-offerings, should be killed 'before Jehovah,' at the door of the 
Tabernacle of the Congregation." 

** But the area of that Court contained, as we have seen, only 1,692 
square 3 r ards, and could only have held, when thronged, about 5,000 peo- 
ple. How then are we to conceive of 150,000 lambs being killed within 
it by, at least, 150,000 people, in the space of two hours, — that is, at the 
rate of 1,250 lambs a minute ? n 

The books of Moses do not say one word about the 
slaying of the passover lambs in the court of the taberna- 
cle. ISTo direction is given to that effect. No statement 
is made implying it. But, says our reasoner, Hezekiah 
and Josiah desired to keep the passover ' in such sort as 
it was written ;' and the lambs were then killed in the 
court of the temple ; therefore it must be written in the 
books of Moses, that they should be killed in the court 
of the tabernacle, although we have these books in our 
hands, and can see for ourselves that they contain 
nothing of the sort ! Why does not the Bishop argue 
that the Mosaic passover must have been kept at Jerusa- 
lem, because Hezekiah and Josiah kept it ' as it was 



170 THE PRIESTS AND THEIR DUTIES 

written,' and they kept it at Jerusalem ? The Mosaic 
directions about the passover are contained Ex. xii. 
1-28, and there is not one word about the tabernacle or 
the priests in the entire passage. Upon its second 
observance no new regulations were given ; the people 
were simply referred to what had been enjoined upon 
them before. u Ye shall keep it in his appointed season ; 
according to all the rites of it, and according to all the 
ceremonies thereof shall ye keep it," Num. ix. 3. 

But in order to prove that the passover must be slain 
in the court of the tabernacle, and that its blood must be 
sprinkled by the priests, Colenso refers us to — 

" this most solemn command laid down in Lev. xvii. 2-6, with the 
penalty of death attached for disobedience." 

" This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, What man 
soever there be of the House of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, 
in the Camp, or that killeth it out of the Camp, and bringeth it not unio the 
door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to offer an offering unto the 
Lord, before the tabernacle of the Lord, blood shall be imputed unto that 
man, he hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his peo- 
ple ; to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which 
they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, 
unto the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, unto the Priest, and offer 
them for peace-offerings unto the Lord. And the Priest shall sprinkle the 
blood upon the Altar of the Lord, at the door of the Tabernacle of the Congre- 
gation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord." 

This quotation is neither pertinent to the question, nor 
is it honestly made. There is not the slightest allusion 
in it to the passover. The regulation prohibits sacrifices 
from being offered in the open field, or anywhere but at 
the prescribed place for sacrificial worship. It was 
designed to guard against the idolatry to which Israel 
was prone, and into which the people were already 
falling. Why does the Bishop seek to hide this from his 



AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE PASSOVER. 177 

readers by breaking off his quotation where be does, 
when the very next words would have shown that the 
statute has relation to a very different subject from that 
to which he applies it ? The thing to be prevented is 
declared in ver. 7, ' And they shall no more offer their 
sacrifices unto idols, after whom they have gone a 
whoring.' What is there in this to intimate that the 
passover was to be observed differently from the law of 
its original institution, especially when this would have 
encumbered its observance with a physical impossi- 
bility ? 

We pass to the last count in the indictment. 



8* 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WAR ON MIDIAN". 

Before proceeding to the proper theme of this 
chapter, our author reviews his work with a gratified 
complacency ; and in the course of this review, he 
indulges in a fling at "the extravagant statements of 
Hebrew writers," or the " systematic habit of exaggera- 
tion in respect of numbers, which prevails among 
Hebrew writers of history," and which he alleges to be 
"more especially true of the Chronicler." 

We can scarcely be expected, at the close of this dis- 
cussion, to enter thoroughly into the refutation of a 
random remark of this kind, which has no connection 
with the subject properly in hand. Nor do we deem it 
necessary to trouble either ourselves or our readers with a 
particular examination of the numbers taken from the 
books of Judges, Samuel, and Chronicles, upon which he 
professes to found it. He has presented no reasons for 
discrediting these numbers ; they only appear to him to 
be too large. If our experience of his accuracy and 
reliability has not been such as to warrant our taking all 
his dicta upon trust, and if we are not willing to condemn 
the sacred writers upon bare suspicion and without 
investigation, we can scarcely renounce their authority so 
summarily as he would have us do. We would be 



THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 179 

obliged to institute a careful inquiry into the circum- 
stances of each individual case, and compare them with 
other well authenticated cases of like description, in the 
ancient world, before we could have reliable data for 
testing the accuracy of the numbers in question. And 
even if this should result in our admission of a probable 
error in one or more of these cases, we would still further 
have to extend our investigation into the numbers of the 
Bible generally, before we could frame a certain and 
reliable theory as to the source of such errors, or at any 
rate before we could be justified in imputing them to a 
" systematic habit of exaggeration." 

We have no intention of going into such a protracted 
disquisition at present. But since the author of the 
books of Chronicles has been singled out as especially 
obnoxious to the charge of systematic exaggeration, we 
may be indulged with a few remarks upon the subject. 

1. The differences in numbers between the narrative 
in Chronicles and the parallel account in Samuel and 
Kings, have often been made an occasion of needless 
cavil. But it should be remembered that every differ- 
ence does not establish a discrepancy. Thus in 2 Sam. 
xxiv. 24, it is said that David bought the threshing-floor 
of Araunah the Jebusite and the oxen for fifty shekels 
of silver. But 1 Chron. xxi. 25, detailing the same 
transaction, affirms that David gave for the place six 
hundred shekels of gold. This apparent conflict, how- 
ever, is easily reconciled by observing that the one price 
was paid for the threshing-floor simply, the other for the 
entire place, including the whole of the future temple- 
area and probably all Mount Moriah. 

2. In those comparatively few instances, in which 
there appears to be a real discrepancy, the author of 



180 THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 

Chronicles is so far from a " systematic habit of exaggera- 
tion " that he not infrequently has the smaller instead of 
the larger number. Thus according to 2 Chron. ix. 25, 
Solomon had 4,000 stalls for horses, but according to 1 
Kings iv. 26, he had 40,000. The Hachmonite, who was 
chief of David's captains, i lifted up his spear against 300 
slain by him at one time,' 1 Chron. xi. 11 ; in 2 Sam. 
xxiii. 8, he is said to have slain 800 at one time. Gad 
offered to David from the Lord a triple choice of evils ; 
among them, according to 1 Chron. xxi. 12, was 3 years' 
famine ; 2 Sam. xxiv. 13, has it 7 years. 

3. There is sometimes reason to believe that the text 
of Chronicles has the correct numbers, even when they 
are larger than those which are found in the parallel his- 
tories. According to 2 Sam. viii. 4, David took from 
Hadad-ezer a thousand and seven hundred horsemen, and 
twenty thousand footmen ; 1 Chron. xviii. 4 has it 1,000 
chariots and 7,000 horsemen, and 20,000 footmen. Here 
the numbers are greater in Chronicles, and yet a better 
proportion is preserved between the different branches of 
the service. And hence the common opinion is that the 
correct statement is the one found in Chronicles. That 
this was the judgment of the translators of the authorized 
English version, appears from their having inserted in 
Samuel the word ' chariots ' taken from the text of 
Chronicles, though they did not venture to make any 
change in the numbers. It thus becomes 1,000 chariots 
and 700 horsemen, making the horsemen inferior in 
number to the chariots, which is less probable than that 
there were 7,000 horsemen as stated in Chronicles. So 
in the numbering of the people by David, 1 Chron. 
xxi. 5 gives to Israel 1,100,000 and to Judah 470,000 
men capable of bearing arms: according to 2 Sam 



THE WAR ON MIDI^N. 181 

xxiv. 7 Israel had 800,000, and Judah 500,000. The 
number assigned to Judah in the two accounts does not 
differ materially, but that attributed to the remaining 
tribes is considerably larger in Chronicles. And yet the 
probability is in favour of the statement in the latter, 
because it seems more likely than that Judah was so 
nearly an equivalent for all the rest of the tribes as the 
numbers of Samuel would make it. 

4. Where there is reason to believe that the number 
in the existing text of Chronicles is too large, a disposition 
to exaggerate cannot with any probability be imputed to 
the writer. One of the most remarkable cases of this 
sort occurs, as cited by the Bishop, " in 2 Chron. xiii. 3, 
where Abijah's force consisted of 400,000 and Jero- 
boam's of 800,000, and Judah slew Israel, ver. 17, ' with 
a great slaughter ; so there fell down slain of Israel 
500,000 chosen men.' " Now although it is quite likely 
that there were as many men, as is here stated, in the 
two kingdoms capable of bearing arms, it is not very 
credible that they could all have been brought into active 
service at one time. And at any rate the slaughter of 
500,000 men on one side in a single engagement, or even 
in a whole campaign, is so enormous that we are forced 
to suspect that there must be some mistake in the num- 
bers. 

Again, " Asa's force consisted of 580,000 ... 2 Chron. 
xiv. 8, Jehoshaphat's of 1,160,000 ' besides those whom 
the king put in all the fenced cities throughout all 
Judah,' 2 Chron. xvii. 14-19." This is so much larger 
than the armies in the same kingdom were at other 
periods, and even than we can suppose to have been 
raised in a kingdom of the extent of Judah, that there is 
probably an error somewhere. 

8* 



132 THE WALl ON M1DJAN 

But if the writer was given to exaggerating beyond all 
bounds, and was tempted in these instances to do so in 
order to enhance the military power of Judah, how 
comes it to pass that he does so only in three instances ? 
Why should Abijah's, Asa's, and Jehoshaphat's armies be 
set down at so high a figure, while no such monstrous 
bodies of troops are assigned to the pious Hezekiah, or 
even to David the most distinguished of the military mon- 
archs of Israel? According to 1 Chron. xxvii. David, 
though he reigned over the undivided people, had but 
288,000 men enrolled in his standing army ; and these 
were not liable to be called out together at any one time 
but were distinguished into twelve divisions, each of 
which served but a month at a time. 

5. The most remarkable instance of discrepancy in 
numbers in the entire Old Testament, is of such a nature 
as to demonstrate in the most conclusive manner, not 
only that this alleged disposition to exaggerate affords 
no satisfactory solution of the phenomenon in question, 
but that it is impossible that it should have existed ; and 
further, that these discrepancies can by no possibility be 
imputed to the original writers, but must have been 
introduced in the course of subsequent transcription. In 
Ezra ii. and ^Nehemiah vii, we have two parallel accounts, 
or rather two copies of the same account of those who 
came up with Jerubbabel, Joshua, and others from the 
captivity. And yet with an agreement throughout, 
which shows that the two lists are identical in origin, 
there are the following differences : 





Ezra iL 




Nehemiah vii. 


The Children of Arah, 


ver. 5 


775 


ver. 10 652. 


" " Pahath-Moab, 


" 6 


2,812 


" 11 2,818. 


u " Zattu, 


" 8 


945 


'■« 13 845. 



THE WAR ON MIDI AN. 



183 







Ezra ii. 






Nehemiah vii, 


The Children of Bani (Binnui), 


vei 


'. 10 


642 


ver. 15 


- 648. 


ii 


" Bebai, 


u 


11 


623 


a 


16 


628. 


it 


" Azgad, 


(i 


12 


1,222 


a 


17 


2,322. 


it 


" Adonikain, 


i< 


13 


666 


(i 


18 


667. 


ii 


" Bigvai, 


ii 


14 


2,056 


(i 


19 


2,067. 


a 


" Adin, 


u 


15 


454 


a 


20 


655. 


il 


" Bezai, 


u 


17 


323 


<< 


23 


324. 


it 


" Hash urn, 


u 


19 


223 


a 


22 


328. 


Bethlehem and Netophah, 


a 


21, 


22 179 


a 


26 


188. 


Bethel and Ai, 


II 


28 


223 


M 


32 


123. 


The Children of Magbish, 


II 


30 


156 






wanting. 


Lod, Hadid and Oho, 


u 


33 


725 


a 


37 


721. 


The Children of Senaah,, 


II 


35 


3,630 


<i 


38 


3,930. 


ii 


" Asaph, 


Ii 


41 


128 


it 


44 


148. 


ii 


" The Porters, 


II 


42 


139 


u 


45 


133. 


« 


" Delaiah, etc., 


l< 


60 


652 


u 


62 


642. 



According to both Ezra ii. 64, and Eeh. vii. 66, ( the 
whole congregation together was 42,360 ; and yet the 
total of the numbers given in detail by Ezra is only 
29,818, and by Nehemiah, 31,089. The traditional 
explanation of these missing thousands is perhaps the 
true one, that they were citizens of the ten tribes, or per- 
sons whose genealogy could not be traced. But the dis- 
crepancies between the two accounts still remain. And 
yet we do not suppose, that Colenso himself would sus- 
pect the writer of either book of having intentionally 
falsified the numbers. They are just such errors as 
would naturally and almost unavoidably arise in the 
repeated transcription of such long lists of unfamiliar 
names and numbers. But the idea of systematic altera- 
tion for the purpose of exaggerating, or for any purpose 
whatever, is absolutely precluded. 

6. The occurrence of this class of textual errors is very 
readily explained, if we assume with the majority of 
commentators, that numbers were originally not written 



184 THE WAR ON MIDI AN. 

out in full, but were expressed by numerical signs or 
symbols, and probably by the letters of the alphabet, to 
which numerical values were attached. It is known that 
the Jews did use their letters in this way, not only 
because the modern Jews so employ them, but upon the 
Maccabean coins the dates are expressed by letters, and 
not by words. The Greeks made a similar use of their 
letters. And that this was not original with them, but 
was borrowed from the Phoenicians, from whom they 
received their alphabet, appears from the fact, that their 
letters so used correspond in value with those of the 
Hebrews and Semitic nations generally ; and that those 
letters which were dropped in ordinary use as signs of 
sound were nevertheless retained as symbols of number. 
Now, as a means 1, and & 1,000, 1 4, and *i 200, ft 5, 
and n 400, i 20, and 3 50, etc. etc., it is easy to see how 
a slight mistake in a letter would introduce a serious dis- 
crepancy in numbers. And it is well known how unre- 
liable figures often are in modern printing and telegraph- 
ing in spite of all the pains which are taken to secure 
accuracy. How can it be thought surprising, then, that 
numerical errors should creep into the text of a book 
which was for ages dependent for its preservation upon 
manual transcription ? The wonder rather is, that these 
errors should be of so rare occurrence, and of such an 
unimportant character as they are. 

7. But further, even if the inspiration of the author of 
Chronicles were to be reduced to that low and modified 
form, in which some have been disposed to hold the doc- 
trine, of merely securing the correctness of all that was 
distinctively religious, but not of vouching for the truth 
of what was merely historical, statistical, or scientific, the 
writer being in these, just as other men would be, left to 



TIIE WAR ON MIDIAN. 185 

the exercise of his unaided faculties ; or even if the ration- 
alistic hypothesis were accepted out and out, and the 
inspiration of the writer were denied altogether, still the 
charge brought by Colenso would be absolutely incred- 
ible and indefensible. There is no book in the Bible, 
in which such constant appeals are made to collateral 
sources of information, as in Chronicles. At the close of 
each reign reference is made either to the public annals 
of the kingdom, or other extant histories contempora- 
neous with the events recorded, both as confirming the 
facts here stated and as containing much that is here 
merety alluded to or is omitted altogether. How could 
a writer, expecting or desiring that his work should be 
accepted as a genuine history of his nation, make appea]s 
of this sort to pre-existing works within reach of his read- 
ers, and at the same time be guilty of wilful falsifica- 
tions of the record, and even betray such a " systematic 
habit of exaggeration in respect of numbers" that a South- 
African bishop can detect him in it with no collateral 
aids whatever, by his simple skill in arithmetic ? Credat 
Colenso, non ego. 

This matter of the numbers of the sacred text, with 
which Colenso deals so flippantly, and so superficially, 
we have not scrupled to present thus broadly upon our 
pages. It is one of the most plausible objections, which 
those who deny the inspiration of the writers of Holy 
Scripture have to allege ; and we have spread it out in 
its details in its full force much more strongly than Co- 
lenso seems to have dreamed that it was capable of being 
exhibited. And what does it amount to ? Why, simply 
this, that in a very few of the books of the Old Testa- 
ment, those, namely, which deal most largely in num- 
bers, transcribers have made occasional mistakes in the 



ISO THE WAK ON MIDI AN. 

figures ; and this in matters which are of no sort of mo- 
ment as regards even the general facts of the history, not 
to say the truths and doctrines of the divine revelation. 
A man, whose faith in the Bible as the word of God is 
disturbed by such a cause, would dispute the reality of 
all the charges in his shop-keeper's bill, because the clerk, 
iu adding up one of the columns, has made the mistake 
of a cent. The very character of these numerical errors, 
and the mode in which they originated, further show that 
they are limited to this specific thing. They imply no 
general corruption or inaccuracy of the text ; and none, 
in fact, exists. It may be affirmed in the most unquali- 
fied manner, that no work of antiquity has come down to 
us with its text so carefully preserved and with so many 
helps for its restoration and correction, even in the minu- 
test matters, as the Scriptures. 

But what chiefly shocks the Bishop's soul is the inhu- 
manity of the massacre of Midian. And in view of this 
he expresses his thankfulness, which he expects will be 
shared by his readers, that his trenchant arguments have 
at length disposed of the credibility of the Pentateuch. 
The oppressive faith of centuries is dispelled, and man- 
kind can now breathe freely, since Colenso has arisen. 

" How thankful we must be, that we are no longer obliged to believe, 
as a matter of fact, of vital consequence to our eternal hope, the story- 
related in Num. xxxi, where we are told that a force of 12,000 Israelites 
'slew all the males of the Midianites, took captive all the females and 
children, seized all their cattle and flocks (72,000 oxen, 61,000 asses, 
675,000 sheep), and all their goods, and burnt all their cities, and all their 
goodly castles,' — without the loss of a single man, — aud then, by command 
of Moses, butchered in cold blood all the women and children, ' except all 
the women-children who have not known a man by lying with him.' 
These last the Israelites were to ' keep for themselves.' " 
- " The tragedy of Cawnpore, where 300 were butchered, would sink intc 



THE WAR ON MIDI AN. 187 

nothing compared with such a massacre, if indeed we were required tc 
believe it." 



We do not know that it would relieve his mind in any 
degree, if we were to suggest to him that the nation of 
the Midianites was not exterminated notwithstanding. 
We find them strong enough at the time of Gideon to 
reduce Israel to subjection, Judges vi. 

A human life is an unspeakably precious thing. To 
destroy the life even of a single human being, without 
just cause and without rightful authority, is an atrocious 
crime in the sight both of God and man. The whole 
civilized world shuddered at the barbarities practised at 
Cawnpore. And yet at that very time England was 
shedding far more blood than flowed in the streets of 
that wretched town. She was giving up the lives of her 
brave and gallant soldiers, and the world rang with 
admiration of their valour. She was mowing down by 
thousands the rebellious Sepoys, and the world confessed 
it just. To maintain the integrity of her empire, to pre- 
serve order and stable government, were ends for which 
England judged that lives might be sacrificed, in profu- 
sion even, if need be. The American people are 
engaged in a struggle at this hour for the maintenance 
of the government under which they have thus far 
prosperously lived, for the preservation of the institu- 
tions bequeathed to them by their fathers, for their 
national life and unity. Thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of valuable lives have been lost already. But the 
verdict of the nation still is that no expenditure of life 
or treasure is to be regarded beside the momentous issues 
at stake. It is the common judgment of mankind, that 
with all the value to be set upon life there are interests 



188 THE WAR ON VIDIAN. 

which are worth purchasing by its loss, even upon an 
extensive scale. 

Nor must it be forgotten that life may be forfeited by 
crime, and may then be justly taken by competent 
authority. What would be thought of a man who should 
sum up the judicial executions in England, and then 
charge that such a number of persons had, by command 
of the courts, been " butchered in cold blood ?" 

Israel was the people of God. In the midst of abound- 
ing idolatry, immorality and crime, they were selected to 
be trained up with reference to the coming salvation. 
The germs of divine truth were implanted amongst them, 
that they might unfold themselves and in due time their 
ripened fruit be given to the. world. To no other people 
is the human race so largely indebted. Egypt, Babylon, 
Greece, and Rome had each its work to do, in prepara- 
tion for the present age. The products of these various 
forms of civilization were successively poured into the 
lap of mankind, and had their share in constituting those 
rich treasures of art and learning and law, of material 
wealth, and liberal culture, and stable, free and beneficent 
institutions, which the world now enjoys. But the 
moulding hand of Israel has had far more to do in deter- 
mining the present state of the world than all others 
combined. The law has gone forth from Zion, and its 
controlling influence has been acknowledged by ' many 
people,' and ' strong nations afar off,' Mic. iv. 2, 3. The 
religion, which has come to us from Israel, is one of the 
most powerful and essential elements in our existing 
civilization. To it we owe our best institutions, our 
noblest and most expansive ideas, our public security, 
our social elevation, our domestic happiness. This reli- 
gion is bringing the world back to God from its state of 



THE WAR ON MID1AN. 189 

alienation. It opens tine way for the perishing and the 
lost to everlasting blessedness. 

The world-wide and immortal interests suspended 
upon the right conduct of this scheme of saving mercy, 
with which Israel was for the time identified, were such, 
that a land might well be cleared of its inhabitants for 
them to occupy it, if this was necessary for its full 
development, or its successful issue. The Sovereign Dis- 
poser of all events might here enjoin, what throughout 
the history of the world He has again and again per- 
mitted, that one nation should dispossess another of its 
seats, and occupy them as its own inheritance. 

The seclusion of Israel from other nations, into whose 
idolatries they might be enticed, or whose example 
would prove infectious, was an important part of the 
plan pursued in the training of that people. And this 
rendered necessary the emptying of some land of its 
inhabitants, that they might be planted in it. This was 
not done, however, by an arbitrary decree, which might 
sweep off the innocent. Much less in the slaughter of 
the Midianites and the extermination of the Canaanites, 
do we see the brutal ferocity of savage tribes, led by 
blood-thirsty leaders. It was nothing of the sort. It 
was just the execution of a divine judicial sentence. He, 
who in the history of the world perpetually employs one 
nation as the unconscious instrument of his judgment 
upon another, here appointed Israel to be the conscious 
executioner of his just decree. The iniquity of the 
Amorites was at length full. They had sunk to a degree 
of debasement, execrated even in the Pagan world, and 
they were doomed by the Eighteous Governor of all to 
be cut off. 



190 TOE W2E OH MIDIAX. 

with rigour and strict severitv. The idea of the sacred- 
ness and majesty of the divine law, the fearfulness of its 
sanctions, and the necessity of obedience, was the first 
thing to be inculcated. This was applied as sternly 
to Israel themselves as to others. The penalty of viola- 
ting the law of (rod in a number of prescribed particulars 
was death ; and even in less heinov nces, the only 

condition of pardon and restoration to theocratic privi- 
leges was the presentation of a bloody sacrifice. Blood 
must flow for sin, either that of the transgressor himself 
or of an accepted substitute. The murmurings and 
transgressions of the people in the wilderness were terri- 
bly avenged. Pestilence, fire from the Lord, and Srr- 
pents taught the people fearful lessons of the sanctity of 
the law of God. And when the crime of the golden calf 
had been committed, the sons of Levi were directed. Ex. 
xxxii. 25. ' to put every man his sword by his side, and 
go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, 
and slay every man his brother, and every man his com- 
panion, and every man his neighbour.' 

It was that they might gain a still deeper impression 
of the stern demands of inexorable law, that Israel was 
in this signal instance entrusted with the execution of 
that law upon others which they were daily instructed to 
apply to themselves. Midian had enticed the people to 
the abominable and disgusting rites of their idol: 
F r their criminal yielding to this solicitation, direction 
was given to the judges to put every Israelite to death 
who was joined to Baal-peor, Xum. xxv. 4. And a 
plague broke out in the camp which carried off 24.000, 
ver. 9. The Lord might have punished Midian, the prin- 
cipal and the instigator in this transgression, as he pun- 
ished Israel, by a plague inflicted immediately by his 



THE WAR ON MIDI AN". 191 

own hand. And, we presume, that even Colenso would 
in that case have shrunk from arraigning the divine 
righteousness. He chose to make his people execute his 
sentence of destruction, that they might thus write their 
own condemnation in case they transgressed again them- 
selves. The women were involved in the same sentence 
with the men, because they were equally guilty. Those 
only were spared, who were of too tender an age to have 
been involved in the crime or to prove a future source 
of contamination. 

That Israel acted not as a people impelled by a savage 
thirst for blood and plunder, but as one conscious of their 
high commission, and doing the simple bidding of the 
Supreme, is apparent from their conduct at the taking of 
Jericho, where none of the spoils were appropriated by 
the people save the single theft of Achan, but all went 
into the treasury of the Lord. A people possessing such 
manifest tokens of the divine presence, and acting under 
God's immediate orders so confirmed, must not be con- 
founded with one acting under a furious and fanatical 
zeal, and converting its own fancies and lawless propen- 
sities into imaginary divine ordinances. A people led 
by the pillar and the cloud, conducted through the Eed 
Sea and the Jordan, and miraculously supported in the 
wilderness, was not a horde of fanatics. And a people 
which received its institutions from the flaming summit 
of Sinai, and which was for forty years instructed by a 
divinely appointed legislator, was not a lawless body of 
savages. 

Colenso's further objection to the narrative, that time 
is not allowed for all the transactions recorded, scarcely 
needs an answer. It is based on a double assumption : 
First, that all the transactions were successive, and none 



192 THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 

of them contemporaneous ; and, Secondly, that each of 
them must have occupied the length of time, which he 
arbitrarily assigns to it. As neither of these assumptions 
is capable of proof, the objection amounts to nothing. 



CONCLUDING KEMAKKS. 

"We have now reached the end of our task. We have 
gone through the whole of what Colenso has to adduce 
against the credibility and authority of the Pentateuch. 
And we cannot help exclaiming, Is it for this that he 
would have us give up our faith in the Bible ? Is it for 
this that he has abandoned his own ? 

As we write these lines we learn that another book 
of his has made its appearance, which is represented to 
be more open and virulent in its assault upon the Scrip- 
tures than that which we have now reviewed. We pity 
the man from our heart. We fear that never having had 
any thorough, well-grounded religious convictions, he 
has now made utter and hopeless shipwreck of the faith. 
He would appear to have so encircled himself with his 
miserable sophisms, as to have lost even the conception 
of the possibility of an honest and intelligent faith in 
others. To his disordered brain every thing is reeling, 
and he fancies every one else to be as unstable as him- 
self. He has no idea but that bishops and clergy and 
churchmen are all secretly cherishing the doubts, which 
he alone has had the courage and the honesty openly to 
express. 

We do not know what Colenso may have said in his 
new book and we do not care. Our aim is answered as 
completely by what we have now done, as if he had 

9 



194 CONCLTTDING BEMAKK8. 

written a thousand books and we had answered them all. 
We have shown, we believe, his utter incapacity to deal 
with the questions which he professes to handle. We 
have spent no epithets upon him. We have uttered no 
denunciation. We have simply examined his statements 
and his arguments : and if such a fact is capable of dem- 
onstration, we have demonstrated that he has neither 
the candour, the learning, nor the ability to discuss the 
topics which he has undertaken to treat and upon which 
*he pronounces so oracularly. 

We have but a single remark to add : and that is, that 
Colenso grievously deceives himself as to the conse- 
quences which result from his position. He imagines 
that he can give up all faith in the historical truth of the 
Bible, all faith in it as a direct revelation from God, and 
yet that the religion of the Bible may remain in its integ- 
rity and power. There never was a greater mistake. 
Undermine the truth and the divine authority of the 
Scriptures, and everything is gone. If the Scriptures 
are not an infallible communication from God, but a mere 
record of the religious convictions of fallible men, and 
the truth or the falsity of whatever they contain must be 
judged of by " the voice of truth within " our hearts, 
then indeed we are reduced to a most miserable plight. 
Everything is involved in doubt, and uncertainty, and 
darkness. 

Colenso tells us "that we must all, and we may all, 
depend entirely on our Father's mercy and come as 
children to his footstool continually for light and life, for 
help and blessing, for counsel and guidance." So we 
may, if the Scriptures are the very word of God. But 
if they are not, who can assure us of all this ? Who can 
tell us whether this awful and mysterious silence, in 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 195 

which the Infinite One has wrapped himself, portends 
mercy or wrath ? Who can say to the troubled con- 
science, whether He, whose laws in nature are inflexible 
and remorseless, will pardon sin ? Who can answer the 
anxious inquiry whether the dying live on or whether 
they cease to be ? Is there a future state ? And if so, 
what is the nature of that untried condition of being? 
If there be immortal happiness, how can I attain it ? If 
there be an everlasting woe, how can it be escaped? 
Let the reader close his Bible and ask himself seriously 
what he knows upon these momentous questions apart 
from its teachings. What solid foundation has he to rest 
upon in regard to matters, which so absolutely transcend 
all earthly experience, and are so entirely out of the 
reach of our unassisted faculties ? A man of facile faith 
may perhaps delude himself into the belief of what he 
wishes to believe. He may thus take upon trust God's 
unlimited mercy, his ready forgiveness of transgressors, 
and eternal happiness after death. But this is all a 
dream. He knows nothing, he can know nothing about 
it, except by direct revelation from heaven. 

The question, therefore, is one of life or death. We 
will not, we can not give up our faith in the Bible. To 
do so is to surrender ourselves to blank despair. It is to 
blot out the sun from the heavens and extinguish at once 
the very source of light and life and holiness. ' All flesh 
is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of 
grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth 
away; but the word of the Lord endureth forever.' 
{ Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life ; and they are they which testify of me.' 




A GRAMMAR OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. 

BY 

WILLIAM HENEY GKEEN, 

PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT PRINCETON. 



New Edition with copious Indexes. 1 Vol. 8vo. Cloth, $3.00. 



This work has been prepared in consequence of the want felt by the author in his 
own instructions, and urgently expressed by others, of a new text-book on Hebrew 
Grammar which should be better adapted to the wants of American students than 
those previously in use. It is designed to be 

1. A manual for elementary instruction. With this view its most essential por- 
tions are distinguished from the rest by the size of the type. Definitions and rules 
are stated with the utmost simplicity, brevity, and precision, and abundant use has 
been made of paradigms and tabular views. 

2. A complete grammatical thesaurus for advanced scholars, exhibiting the phe- 
nomena of the language in a full and exhaustive manner. 

3. A faithful representative of the advanced state of Hebrew philology. Hence, 
while nothing has been accepted upon authority, but all has been subjected to origi- 
nal and independent investigation, the attempt has been made to incorporate what- 
ever is valuable in preceding grammars, particularly in those of G-esenius, Nord- 
heimer, and Ewald. 

4. A safe and trustworthy guide. There is throughout a conscientious adherence 
to the results of a sober criticism and a sound evangelical interpretation, as opposed 
to that neological bias which, to a greater or less extent, infects all similar works of 
transatlantic origin. 

Commendations of the Work. 

"Altogether Prof. Green has done himself great credit in these grammatical labors, as a careful, 
earnest, and exact scholar; and we judge, from the attention we have thus far given to it, that it 
must come into general use, as furnishing the best apparatus for beginners, while it is no less 
valuable for advanced learners. "We have introduced it here, and we regard it as fitted to supply 
the wants of our Theological Seminaries in the Grammar of the Old Testament," — M. "W". Jacobus, 
D.D., Western Theological Seminary. 

" In a brief notice it is impossible to speak of all the points of interest in this grammar. Some 
of the most noticeable features, however, are the treatment of the vowels, the fulness with which 
the position and consecution of the accents are exhibited, and the rejection of the declension sys- 
tem in presenting the inflections of the noun." — Christian Herald and Presbyterian Recorder. 

" "We have bestowed sufficient attention upon this Grammar to be satisfied that it is an advance 
upon any and all works of the kind in the English language." — Boston Recorder. 

" So far as I have examined the work I am very much pleased with its plan, the principle on 
which it is constructed, and the clearness and precision of its statements and definitions. "With- 
out doubt, I shall think it useful to introduce it as our regular Text-Book." — Prof. H. Bahnisteb, 
Garnett Biblical Institute. 

" One special recommendation of Prof. Green's grammar is, that its rules are never illustrated 
by supposititious foims, but by actual examples from the Old Testament, the whole grammar thus 
furnishing what is most needed, and is of invaluable service to the student, a large collection of 
the phenomena of the language as it is found in the Hebrew Bible." — Christian Review, Roches- 
ter, N. Y. 

"Thus his Grammar is likely to supersede those in common use, and we doubt not its general 
adoption will be advantageous. The volume is a model of beautiful printing, and is, in every par- 
ticular, highly attractive." — Presbyterian. 

'It is but simple justice to say that it is refreshing to have at last an intelligible grammar of 
the Hebrew language. I have been obliged to study the language almost entirely without a 



teacher, and the grammar of Gesenius has heen a terrible stumbling-bleck to me. This grammar, 
a few years earlier, would have saved me endless perplexities, and encouraged and aided me not a 
little in the study of the language." — Lyman Coleman, D.D., Lafayette College. 

"That there is room for a better, more practical Hebrew Grammar all admit. That Prof. 
Green has made it, we are induced to believe. Though experience only can show this con- 
clusively, yet we are disposed to think that Prof. Green has caught the right view of a 
Hebrew Grammar and carried it out with skill."— The Presbyterian Quarterly Review. 

"(This Grammar now under consideration is highly creditable to American scholarship, in 
the department of sacred literature, and we hail its appearance with pleasure." — The BibUotheca 
Sacra. 

"But is there really need of another Hebrew Grammar? "With our by-gone recollections of 
Stuart and Nordheim6r, we should say emphatically that there is." " At the instance of the 
late Prof. J. Addison Alexander, Prof. Green has undertaken to supply this deficiency— a 
work for which his learning in Oriental tongues and his experience in teaching, abundantly 
qualifies him. This grammar has already been adopted at several Seminaries." — The New 
York Independent. 

"Dr. Green's Hebrew Grammar is a valuable addition to our Hebrew Literature." — Wm. 
H. Campbell, D.D., New Brunswick. 

" While Prof. Green has made thorough use of the labors of other scholars, he has handled 
his materials in an independent manner, and produced a work which has a character of its 
own. "We are sure that this grammar of Prof. Green's will be received with gratitude by bib- 
lical scholars, and justly valued as an important help to a more thorough knowledge of the 
old Testament Scriptures." — Pbof. Henby H. Hadley, Union Theological Seminary, New 
York. 

" I fully concur with what is said by Prof. Hadley in commendation of Prof. Green's gram- 
mar, with the plan and execution of which, so far as I have had opportunity to examine it, 
I am much pleased."— Peop. W. D. "Whitney, Yale College. 

" Prof. Green has united in an extraordinary degree simplicity with thoroughness, so that 
his grammar may be used at every stage of Hebrew study. The work has copious and well 
arranged indexes, four in number. It is altogether executed in a manner which reflects the 
highest honor on Biblical Science in America. We are acquainted with no Hebrew Gram- 
mar, which we can recommend so unreservedly as we can recommend this." — The Lutheran 
and Missionary. 

" Prof. Green, of the Princeton Theological Seminary, has prepared an excellent Hebrew Gram- 
mar, which will doubtless come into very general use. The whole work is in a high degree cre- 
ditable to American scholarship." — American Theological Review. 



IN PRESS. 

A HEBEEW CHEESTOMATHY. 

BT 

WILLIAM HENRY GREEN, 

PB0FE8S0B IN THE THEOLOGICAL BEMINABY, PBINOETON, N. J. 

This work is a sequel to the Grammar of the author, and is designed to facilitate 
the progress of beginners in the Hebrew Language. It consists of a series of Gram- 
matical Exercises and of selected portions from the Old Testament. The latter have 
been so chosen as to embrace many of the most interesting and important passages 
of the Hebrew Bible, of progressive difficulty and representing every variety of style ■ 
and they fully equal the amount read in our best Theological Seminaries in the 
course of the first year. They are accompanied by copious and carefully prepared 
Grammatical and Exegetical Notes and a Vocabulary. 



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